


pink lemonade

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Death, Drugs, Guns, Knives, M/M, Sex, Smoking, Violence, wholesome and family friendly i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-11-23 13:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 48,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11403279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: togami and naegi kill people for a living.





	1. Chapter 1

It's three AM. The window is open. Scotch burns its way down his throat.

Quaint hasn't a place in his vocabulary. He calls home currently to the dark oak drowning his second story office, banisters obscuring papered walls and hardwood beneath his impeccable feet. Far be it from himself to squander the wealth obtained through a lifetime of rigor, and no better is there a way to showcase that fortune than an estate of pure gold- on occasion, in her literal sense.

He's Togami Byakuya, for fuck's sake, and he'll do whatever he damn well pleases.

Condensation flicks off fingertips as he sets the tumbler to his desk top. A dozen papers have their corners teased to flickering, serpents' tongues in the incoming breeze. But the only serpent is the one seated behind the desk, tucked neatly into designer Versace, the tightest swallow of liquor turning his inner flame to vapor that billows from lips taut. But- and he's forgotten the metaphor already, and he's not a serpent at all but a tiger with fur of cashmere and eyes that glint like diamonds in twisting sunshine. Because he likes the authority, the claws that drag nasty through adversarial guts.

But, oh, what soul dare don him their rival? Not a living one, he thinks in complacence as the rim of his glass meets more dark Diageo kisses.

"Please, just- just let me go," wafts from beside him, "I promise, I'll never come back,  _please-"_

 _One_  living one. But- he crushes ice between his teeth as he would fresh bone -not for long.

His right hand continues its plight of coddling documents with ink, illmatching the left curled round the handle of an M9 and  _starving_ to twitch.

"Begging for your life?" he muses without the slightest pinch of emotion over his sinisterly handsome face. "Pitiful for someone of your stature."

This stature, he hardly knows of, but is quite certain anyone who'd hire a skinny little twink of an assassin to take him out in the night's midst must be up there in the ranks. Perhaps just a notch below himself. Obviously not above nor even on the same level of superiority, but  _perhaps_ close to it. He intends to conclude just how close.

A swivel- the convict jerks backwards, disturbing the makeshift duct handcuffs that'd been wrestled onto him in the heat of a boot to his chest and a cocking that echoes still through his head. A swivel, and those boots are instead resting atop his desk's corner, folded one over the other, just as his hands come to rest on his abdomen. The other blinks a wide set of hazel green eyes, wondering in what dream world a victim would lay his gun down inches from someone who'd come to end his life.

He's Togami Byakuya, for fuck's sake, and this intruder will learn this soon if he hopes to have a pulse in the coming minutes.

"I'm not an idiot," Togami says, capturing those eyes another time from where they'd drifted toward the weapon. "But you would be, if you made any sort of move for that."

And that's logic he cannot deny, so he sits straight-backed in his spot on the floor, holding his chin high and proud and all other things he wishes he were, and he waits. Togami taps fingers to opposite knuckles, contemplates just what pathway to tread down. Why he'd even spared this pathetic life- answers,  _answers answers answers._ The first card drawn from the shuffled deck of his mind: "I know you're armed, so you'd be better off relinquishing it all to me before I take it by force."

Not a question, though a necessary starter all the same. Perhaps another, simpler man would have asked first for a name, age, hobbies- but he doesn't fucking  _care,_ just wants to be as rich in enemies' misfortune as he is in cold, cold, cold hard cash. The unnamed ageless monomath shifts his wrists before himself.

"Well, uh, you-you need to let my hands go first-"

His laugh is stark and short and cynical. "No, I really truly don't. Tell me where exactly it is that you're packing heat and I'll get it myself."

"Well, uh-" he starts again, drawing blue eyes to crave the immaculate ceiling. Rather than speak, he spreads apart two leather-clad legs, leaving Togami a touch hesitant behind the wash of  _dear god let it be a thigh holster_ as he reaches to undo his belt and fly. It is relief he finds alongside the black strap around a muscular upper leg, relief and contempt. "A  _butterfly knife?"_ He has to laugh again, flicking the blade from its handle and twirling it about the air around him. "Please,  _petit sot_ , you thought to end  _my_ life-" he waves it precariously close to the owner's face, "with this?"

The tip teases across his cheekbone, and Togami has to give it to him- he doesn't pull away even once a thin stream of scarlet mars his porcelain doll face. "...It's worked plenty of times before."

"My, my, what sudden courage you've mustered,  _petit connard."_ The blade stands upwards in a single harsh stab into the oak.

More valor follows. "That isn't my name."

"Oh?" Togami folds one knee over the other, spreads arms open in leisurely patience. "Then, do tell."

"Naegi Makoto," Naegi Makoto barks to him, though it comes off more as an annoying little _yap_ from the types of dogs that just beg to be kicked. Still he holds high his face, blood marked now and eyes narrowed into ferocity. Togami notices a short white scar beside his scowling lips. He opposes it with a wide grin of his own.

"Never met an assassin who's told me their full name before," and Naegi pales in desperation of his error. Into his chair, he leans more, presses the gun's barrel idly to his palm after lifting it once more. "But then again, I've never met an assassin. No one's ever lacked the guts enough to take me out on their own."

Emotions display themselves in conspicuous waves through the colors of his face. It sickens him, though the flash of fear suits his ego finely. "Tell me, Naegi Makoto," The weapon kisses his temple's hollow.  _Click._ "Who is it?"

"Who's-" he licks his lips, sweats a frenzy underneath his stupid mess of bangs, "Who's- who is who?"

"Who is it that's got your cock tied around their little finger like this?"  _Click click._ "Or do you honestly expect me to believe you're the mastermind behind this? That you decided, on your own, to climb into my second story window at three AM and make to stab a child's plaything through my throat?"

Tape shuffles against his wrists. He refuses to meet the gaze of his captor. "I...I can't te-"

"You can if you'd enjoy keeping what minimal brains are in here," and he taps the gun to his skull a quick trio. Naegi winces.

"You're- You're all talk!"

A dark spread of smooth lips crosses his face.  _Click._  "Care to place a wager on that?"

Then it's wit versus stupidly sage, glinting diamond eyes versus heartmelting honey, and Naegi could get his hands free if he just squirms a little more, a little more, could reach out and grasp that knife tantalizing him from mere inches- and then what? A twelve-hundred yen knife versus a slaughter of lead bullets. Naegi walks his eyes in throwing darts across the room, lavish and posh as he'd been told, and...concedes.

"Look." And Togami does, glances down to him in tedium. "...My car's outside. There's like, twenty kilos of coke in the trunk. Let me go, and it's yours."

" _Cocaine?"_ the businessman spits. "You think I want drugs? You're out of your damn mind."

"Huh? You don't... _huh?_ "

He flicks his nose upward. "My body is a  _temple._ If you think I'd sully the pristineness of that with drugs, you're more of a fool than I'd already taken you for."

"Huh," comes again, though this time less  _what the fuck?_ and more contemplative. "I guess...you don't have to do it to sell it. Probably brings in a stronger profi-"

"Sell it? Are you serious?" In his vehemence, the pistol leaves its place, dropping to his hip with his stride of legs to the corner. "You dare insinuate I'm some sort of worthless drug lord who makes a living off decreasing the brain cells of the world's population? I've  _earned_ my fortune every step of the way. I fought for this all, Naegi Makoto, and if you ever again imply anything less admirable of me than that," He twists at the waist, firing off a blazing bullet at the set of constricted hands inching toward the blade stuck into the desk. Naegi yelps, dives sideways at sound's speed to save himself and lands with chest huffing. Togami holds the gun upwards. "Then I won't miss next time." Smoke wisps theatrically past a blown breath.

Naegi's fairly certain he's just pissed himself.

To the beat of footsteps trailing his way he scrambles to sitting up again, back resting to the thick drawers lining from desktop to floor.

"So you're... _not_  in a drug cartel..?"

Scoff. "Absoultely not. What ever gave you that idea to begin with?"

"Well, uh-" there it is again, again, again-  _God,_ say something  _intelligent "-_ uh, Enosh- ...My boss...my boss took a hit out on you, and I figured you were some kind of rival. But you're just...some dude."

" _Just some du-?"_

"Alright, alright, you're the almighty Togami Byakuya, God Himself quakes in your presence." He sighs, drops his head back against the desk. "But that still doesn't explain the hit."

A chokehold of silence lines the air. It breaks by the choke of a startled breath with a hand gripping the collar of his black zip-up.

"Just who exactly is this cocaine-junkie  _boss_ of yours that knows my name and address, and feels it a necessity to have his little bitch boy come take me out?"

He squirms against the hold. "I'm not her bitch!" Then all at once halts, prays the livid rush through the other's mind will prevent him from catching-

" _Her?_  Hah _-_ that's twice as pathetic. Such a timid puppy you are that you can't put a woman in her place?"

"Don't be sexist," Naegi yaps again, realizing too late how asinine it sounds in the wake of such intensity. To cleanse it, he takes a rancid battle tactic, pushes his lips out to spit at him. A line of drool trails weak down his chin.

Togami tips his head in a cackle. He thinks he's done more laughing tonight than the whole of his youth. "You expected to kill me, yet you have trouble merely launching your filthy spit at me. Really, Naegi Makoto, you've got too many strikes against you to be successful."

Null is spoken in reply. An empty gaze falls toward the same window that'd gotten him into tonight's awful, awful mess, and he shuts his eyes then to pair with a drop of breath. It enters him sharp again once from above him sounds that same  _click._

"I suppose I've no choice but to kill you, then. Considering you're no use to me now that you won't cooperate-"

"Enoshima Junko!" It hops from his tongue before it's gotten his brain's approval. They blink at one another a moment, Naegi crawling a fraction out of shooting range. "...Enoshima Junko. She runs the drug trade through Yokohama. She- she wants money, I guess, and you must've seemed like an easy target-  _hf!"_

Mother cat to kitten, he's lifted by the hood and tossed gruffly into the chair, sliding back on wheels before a foot stops it at the base.

"Take me to her," Togami demands centimeters from his dumbfounded face.

He shifts his shoulders in discomfort. "...Why?"

The matrimony of their distance breaks off with a tall rise and reload into the barrel. "Because I'm going to kill the bitch."

"Oh, no." A thick swallow, a defiance unheard of. "I can't let that happen. I shouldn't have even told you anything at all."

"Betrayal is all part of the game." A hand reaches to cup his chin. "Don't you know if you come home to mommy and report you've failed to do your job in my murder, she'll toss you out and have another slut to warm her lap in the next millisecond?"

The wording irks him, the way they twist about these dirty  _lies._ "Guess I just won't fail, then."

Fingers tighten until his jaw's near cracked. "Oh, Naegi Makoto, you poor, tired fool."

Staring, flame and fire fogging window panes. Togami thins his eyes to slits, squeezes the other's mouth to a forced circle, and spits directly into it.


	2. Chapter 2

"Yes, I'd like to report a break-in."

Hands have since passed 4:15. Dawn's a toxic tango of deep purples and misfortune. A new layer of tape's been applied to his wrists, matched now with his ankles (though he'd gotten in a good session of flailing in the process) and a piece flush to his mouth. There's no sense in squirming; he sits back, propped in the room's corner while he listens to the phone call on the other side of the long table.

"Yes. Armed and dangerous." Togami rests elbows to desk as he speaks into the receiver. A thousand thoughts cram zooming through Naegi's head. He'd been an idiot to release as much information as he had, divulging nearly all but the length of his dick to this perfect stranger with a neat and crisp vendetta now in his pocket. Obedience is his best option here, the only way he sees himself escaping the sure-to-arrive prison time for working as a full fledged murder machine. But...but  _betrayal is all part of the game_ \- a game he quite yearns to win. Or at the very least...not come in dead last. Because, in this game, that fate's literal.

"Yes, qui-" From the phone, he lifts his attention, casting midnight eyes over the other. Naegi struggles suddenly, mumbling fervor behind the tape, which leaves him in a burning tear after trailing steps to his corner. Gasps are his freedom's mantra.

"You win," he says, "Anything you want I'll- I'll do it."

A moment of thought, then a wide cheshire cross his lips. He removes the phone from his face, screen still black from never having been turned on. "Excellent."

Indignance crawls all through him. "You tricked-"

"Yes, and you fell for it." A pout aims upwards at him. Ankles lose their bounds in a rip. "Stand up. We're going to Yokohama."

Naegi begins next with his  _uhh,_ pauses to force his feet beneath him by utilizing the wall gainst his back. It's the first time he's noticed just how much stature he's lacking when compared to his detainer, but shakes the distraction from him. "I don't think you should do that. Not even because it's my boss and everything. Seriously, dude, if you walk in there, the only way you're getting out is in a body bag."

Back turned to him, Togami rummages within a depth cut into the wall. He'd shouldered a grandfather clock out of the way before breaking into the metal covering with some kind of DNA identification, Naegi guesses, and now picks through its contents like a lion sizing up gazelles for its morning meal. He turns soon around again, another handgun in his possession, this one a sleek silver with detailed impressions along the barrel. He loads it, says "Do not call me  _dude_ ," and tucks it into the inside of his suit jacket.

He herds his captive down the stairs to where he'd parked his shoddy little Toyota, takes a glance over and nods him forward to the passenger side. For the second time he fishes around his pelvis as if they're long time lovers to retrieve car keys and plunge them into the ignition. Little speech is exchanged on the drive, one that he controls out of pure intellect, only the initial order of, "Address," as he holds out his phone's GPS application to his strained fingertips.

The grandeur of his personal luxury melts slowly into a gradient of simplicity, the lesser perception of what life could be. Concrete jungle. Office park. It all fades past the thin squint of eyes trained to the early morning roads paved just for him. A glance steals but once to his left, finds everything in order with Naegi nestled tight to the car door, and paints his attention back over the task at hand. In the next  _re_ _calculating...26 minutes to your destination_ he'll have a shower awaiting the bloodstains on his hands and a fresh cadaver to make his toy.

And a breathing plaything to match. His lips purse closely. This new acquisition had arrived so suddenly, sans any sort of warning. He's really no use for him once this whole ordeal (something else that, he thinks, has happened all too rapidly, his head still spinning off the vibes of liquor) comes to its bitter finale. In and out, load cock and fire. Perhaps he'll throw a second shot in there to take care of the rat curled up in his passenger side, too. And he exhales with the notion that he need not wait as long as that; there's no further use for him now that he knows where he's going and who's neck to wring once he's there. It'd be more humane to off him now, really.

And he smirks with the notion of- well, where's the fun in that?

_You have arrived at your destination._

Dust scatters from where it had settled on his mind over the cruise. A cold draws over him, before reckless abandon turns his head to intake his mission map. His nose wrinkles in on itself. A tall apartment complex awaits, dark against the blackened skyline. Wires connect telephone poles down the street decorated with more crunched cigarette butts and faded amber alert flyers than cracks in the sidewalk.

"Certainly a shithole of a headquarters." Though he supposes it fits, the...what, some sort of public squalor he'd call it, makes sense to micromanage felonies within. Into his breast pocket he tucks the sleek black of his cell phone, shoving aside seatbelt's constriction to lay a handle to the door. Naegi sits upright as if lightning's struck his spine, and he's got the messy bedhead to prove its path. He blinks a series, mouth low and tight, streetlights glinting through hazel.

As if he's all night, a long minute is spent in quiet stillness, peering at the building nearest their curbside parking spot. It is at last the impatience of a snarl from through the window that coaxes Naegi to awkwardly fumble his handless way to standing on the pavement aside him. Freed from the vehicle, he's freed likewise from the bounds of tape.

"Here's how this is going to happen," Togami starts in total authority, startling Naegi's hands from their rubbing of each smarting wrist to curl instead around the handle of a classy Colt 44. "You're going to walk in there, five feet of hell on wheels, and you're going to tell princess bimbo that you've oh-so wonderfully spilled my guts." He pauses to ensure the details have so far sunk in, goes on after a short breath, "Then you're going to shoot her in the face."

"Hold on-"

"Why do you have to be the one to do it?" This pause is instead for cold jeering humor. "Because, I'm not an idiot."

Still, his unease has no salve. The gun is scanned below gaze vast, shoved next toward the other's unaccepting possession. "I can't. You-."

Growls tumble into the hot night. Again its those hands on his collar, gruff and unforgiving and capable of what he dares not question. "You work for  _me_  now, Naegi Makoto. Is that clear?"

At his hip trembles knuckles around the weapon. It raises slow, and he can hardly breathe in the twist of his shirt's front so taut, and he'll do it, he'll do it right now by the raise of this frigid metal, and- And it leaves his hand in a snap, lifted half a meter's length above his head as he's dropped down to his feet. Naegi leaves a moment to harsh force of lungs, face turned hot by vicinity close and the sharp gust of rum and tyranny left on him from the other's words.

"...Uh-huh."

Then it's just the breeze through his blonde and the door in his face, and Togami's left standing alone on the filthy curb of an urban ghetto at five in the morning, and he has to wonder what at all he's done to deserve it.

At the very least, he decides in a fold of cuffs up ankles and arms crossed over his chest, he won't be so horrendously infected to lay touch to the car behind him should he sit again in there. In blunt irritation he finds that once he's blessed the handle by his touch, that it hasn't even the decency to open, however; he bleeds ire in thoughts of it having had the keys locked inside, but a glance through proves no cigar. Naegi must have more clandestine bones in him than he'd imagined.

He accepts the current state of defeat by leaning against the hood as panacea, eyes shifty toward both the building and its surroundings. He's no idea the specifics of what tiptoes in the dark around him, but knows it has no place existing in the same world as himself. It sickens him to dwell on it. He taps his boot bottoms and twists his lips to a scowl, a moody teenager dragged to a family reunion when she could be home fawning over the pretty boys in  _General Hospital_ instead.

A sigh drags his head to tilt upwards. Translucent smog forbids the sky from showcasing its canvas of constellations in this part of the city. He'd be hard pressed to care.

And then Togami's leaning against the dusty hood of an old corolla at five:thirty in the morning, and six, and six:twenty-two, until it is decided that that's more than enough time to pull a bait and switch for a good boy gone trigger happy, and he approaches the apartment steps with as much confidence as if there  _weren't_ a mess of armed stoners convened inside of it.

The entryway swings at the push of his palm flat to it that wipes instantly to his thigh's fabric. He thinks himself, vaguely, a madman for walking in with such nerve, then remembers  _he's Togami Byakuya,_ and takes to the stairs in hop-skip mettle.

There isn't a single sound, no bangs of bullets nor shrieks of souls lost, hardly even the faintest wisp underneath his rising steps. No noise at all, until it is the clatter of those steps defying gravity and he's slung a sharp kick against a door marked  _5B_ _._ It remains solid, mortifies him mildly. Phase two- fingers clasp the knob to no avail other than clamorous jiggling. The thought crosses him that he'd left himself without any weapon aside from two hands and a dissident attitude, and he wonders in a far off corner of his mind just what brand of stupidity that counts for. That corner shakes within his skull like a mutt refusing raindrops; he doesn't need a gun to get his way. He's Tog-

"Who the hell are you?"

They'd emerged from behind him, tall and balding and rough around every edge. The man fixes Togami with a look of distaste, as though he were some intrusive insect, a slice of durian beneath his tongue.

He places himself at full stature, chest pushed high and eyes dark in their depthless oceans that steal sailors from ships. "...And what right is it of yours to speak to me in such a manner?" It's dangerous, he knows- but he lives and breathes peril.

The man cocks his jaw sideways. "The right of the guy who don't wanna be woken up at six thirty in the morning to some queer in the hallway kicking doors in."

The petty insult means null to him. "Sleeping on the job? Is Enoshima Junko so hard up for lucre that she cannot afford even a competent lackey?"

"Enoshawhat?" Gloomy circles line the man's shifting eyes. His chin is broad underneath dots of stubble. "Buddy, keep the drunken bullshit outside. I got work in an hour."

He makes to disappear back behind  _2B,_ but is caught on the forearm by an unthinking hand. Irritation outlines his expression on a turn.

"Hey-! _"_

"Do you live here?"

Togami stares past the puzzled glare aimed for him. Inside, there's an array of furniture, checkered curtains dancing in the breeze of windows across the open den area. And- "No, I just come and  _hang out!_ in this fully furnished apartment where my girl 'nd my kid are sleeping in the next room. Get lost!"

A stumble steals his footing when he's abruptly brushed away. He hears the lock click latched on the door's interior.

Hands find his lapels to straighten them. It's hard to keep an elegance in such a dingy atmosphere, but it is with utmost regality that he lifts his perfect little knuckles to rap upon the door's exterior.

It swings open as though hinged by rockets.

" _Look,_ guy, I don't know-"

"Which apartment does Naegi Makoto live in?" Less is it a question than a cool demand. The other recoils a bit.

"There's fifty rooms in this place, you expect me to know every tenant?" The door goes to shut anew, but fingers wrap round it solid and halt the motion.

"He's short. Has green eyes. And drives a shitty Corolla." Each syllable is a flick of fire past his lips; his eyes remain in their perpetual glaring shock. "Which. Room."

2B exhales harshly, runs a hand through thin bits of hair as though thinking deep by the swap of vision elsewhere. "The little girly lookin' dude in 3C, maybe?"

_Oh, most certainly,_ and he turns without bothering for pleasantries. The man seems not the slightest insulted, rather pleased to be able to snap the door closed and be rid of disruption.

The trek up the next staircase is a plight of livid daydreams. He reaches the third level, glances down rows of doors.  _Recalculating..._ _13 seconds and so much fury you'd rather you were cold in your bed with a butterfly knife piercing your throat to your destination._


	3. Chapter 3

His fist carries with it the rage of a dozen generations passed. Third door down the line.  _BANG- BANG- BANG-_

His skin near contuses from the effort. It's another series of slams from his hand's side into the flimsy wood before the knob quakes a metallic melody of rushing fingers to fling it open.

The little girly looking dude in 3C stands in front of him, hair frazzled into worse messy points than before and thin legs poking out long from boxer shorts patterned in stars. Togami notes the shadows beneath his wide eyes, and that he's still wearing the same hoodie as when they'd met last, and- and none of that matters, because he's about to have his spine snapped in two, anyway.

"Just what the absolute  _fuck-?!"_

"Sh!" Naegi fumbles to say, scanning the desolation of the hall before he ushers the other to enter. Rather than the room he'd stolen a look at below, this one opens into a little kitchen lined half with counters. A two-seater dining table is shoved in between two windows, blocking another door behind it.

Attention is snapped back to the next speaker. "Okay, I know you're probably... _mad_ -"

" _Mad_  does not begin to describe the-"

"Mmf...What's all the yellin' and bangin' about?"

Their eyes flick together to the open entryway at the room's left side. Togami glowers drops of flaming tourmaline at the new figure. He  _hates_  being caught off guard, and he  _hates_  this girl standing in tiny shorts and a baseball top, yawning into her stupid words. She blinks a few times in the oncoming morning, her short brunette bob fanning to one side when she tilts her head. "Who's this, Makoto? Did this guy break in-?"

"No, no, Komaru." Frantic hands wave off the accusation. "Nothing like that. Don't worry about it."

Skepticism thins her curious navy eyes. Then all at once they widen, matching a grin spreading her mouth. "Ohh...Is he your  _boooy_ friend?"

Togami finds the flush that climbs his face  _putrid_. "No, no! Just...someone from work."

"Considering you attempted my murder three hours ago," he adds in, adjusting the bridge to his lenses, "No, and far from it."

"Sounds like romance to me," the girl singsongs as she steps past them. Socked feet plant to one of the two dining chairs to reach herself into the pantry behind it.

"Uh,"  _And who else would that be?_  "Let's go talk on the patio."

"Talk?" he snaps. "Are you out of your mind? I don't want to  _talk_  to you; I want to blow your brains ou-"

"Makoto, do we have milk?"

The conversation splits in favor of tending to her, head stuck into the fridge in search.

Togami snarls.

The third starts steps toward her, beckoning his guest to follow. They skirt past the cramped spaced between refrigerator and table to squeeze through that door Togami had spied upon his initial entrance. "There's almond milk on the door," calls just before it pushes shut again.

On the deck, the quiet of early morning beguiles his throat to close a moment. Deference lines his tongue's halt for the soft glow of sunrise. Naegi follows in the silence, watching the low orange-scarlet melt into the horizon.

Togami sobers after observing a quick minute. He turns to the other, and a crack of wind is his palm in the early morning gorgeous sunrise against the other's cheek. The slap sears fresh the cut from yesterday, which fingers fly up to to cover alongside his yelp.

"What was that for!?" He rubs the skin as a dark palmprint surfaces.

Togami stands back in hot breaths of agitation. "You tricked me."

"Yeah," Naegi says, rubbing another few times before dropping his wrist to his side. The scar on his lip flexes around the threat of a smirk. "And you fell for it."

His nostrils flare along with his hand again rising. Sunlight paints the shadow of himself over Naegi, who flinches in the wake. He pauses, thinks them both too delicate, drops his arm into a cross into the other.

"...You're a lucky bastard, Naegi Makoto." The namesake blinks. "You'd be over that railing and splattered on the road were I not such a kind and generous man."

Naegi guesses too late that snorting out laughter isn't an appropriate response. He stiffens under the glare, runs a hand through his fluffed bangs. "Look...I can't let you just go and risk your life trying to take out Enoshima like that. You really don't know what she's capable of."

"You can't let me risk my life, but you were perfectly fine taking it yourself." He scoffs. "I don't need you protecting me, nor do you have any reason to."

A silence breaks through the air. Robins chirp in a far off grotto beneath them. Another time, Togami breathes a jeering scoff, takes to claim the door beneath his hand but is halted in a startle of prowess.

"You can't kill Enoshima because- because I need to keep my job..!"

It catches him in a short spin of shoulder the other way. A brow lifts, though Naegi is furled within himself, head leant down and voice now soft.

"...That girl you met in there is my little sister," wisps quiet past his lips. "I'm all that she has. I need to be able to provide for her, even...even if it's just this shitty little apartment and a carton of almond milk, you know? I can't help her- or my-myself -if I don't have this. And," a short laugh spills, "Enoshima pays  _good_."

Then it's that silence again, those robins and the waking dawn. Togami stands in the thick syrup of thought.

"...I didn't ask for your sob story. You sound pathetic." Again Naegi winces, each word the lighting through his blood. "You want money? Money means nothing. It's the power that counts for anything."

He nods, brisk breeze teasing the bare flesh of his legs, the tips to his hair. A hand scrubs over his face, tired and battered and marked with more knowing than should be of a man his age.

"And, as I told you, you work for me now, so they'll both come in bulk."

It's instinctive. "What?"

His chin tilts from high and mighty to facing him straight on. "The last person to ever pull one over on me was my father telling me he loved me." Naegi cocks his head like a puppy in wonder, to which he sneers further, "Your craftiness is almost...admirable. You could be a valuable asset to my corporation, if you stop fucking up all of your tasks."

It breathes a near compliment; Naegi's lungs shudder. Life is a jigsaw puzzle, and he wonders if this piece is a match.

"So what'll it be?" Handsome is his tone, handsome is the stroke to his offer. "Care to play renegade?"


	4. Chapter 4

There's an indent in the wood inside of the patio door where it meets the table's edge. White paint flakes from the bare spot. Togami wonders why the fuck no one's ever thought of moving the fucking table, especially once he takes initiative to return to the kitchen and hits the fucking door into the fucking table.

"Hey, watch the merch," comes from just beyond it, mouthful of cereal and the bowl of it now sloshing haphazardly. The new voice stiffens him, not expecting to see, upon curling himself about the slim opening between wall and  _fucking table_ , a twenty-something redhead eating chocolate rice cereal dressed down to underwear and piercings.

"Oh, good morning," Naegi says once he too has slipped inside. He seems to take on a thin film of shock to see him, glancing between the half-naked yankii and precious baby sister across, then back up to the ghost over their breakfast atmosphere. "Uh...Togami this is my roommate, Kuwata. And you already met Komaru."

"Kinda," she says back, and waves to him. Kuwata lays a bare arm over the chair back and aims scrutiny up and down the new guest. Then he grins.

"'Sup?" That sparkling simper turns toward the next, hides behind a raised hand as though shielding the words from their descriptor. "New boy toy, Naegs?"

A huff follows the remark. Naegi pockets his hands in a lean back against the counters behind him. "No...He's my new boss."

Hush falls over them, though he makes no moves to leave the air awkward. His hip checks against the refrigerator door, and the next thing Togami knows he's agreed to a sweet little  _Coffee?_ and cream's turning the mug in his grasp into a masterpiece of yang and yin.

His left hand is stiff to right elbow, other arm rising after a long bit frozen to seal the rim to his lips. Eyes dark, he says into the steam, "Excellent choice."

Naegi smirks from behind his own mug.

* * *

The bay bridge is long and dauntless. He wishes for it to never end.

It seems their every meeting is in the deep maw of the night; this proves no exception. Naegi's far past delighted to take in the glint of stars reflecting through the windshield, though.

They've spent the core of their time as  _coworkers_ building up sufficiency. Two days past and they've both still got all limbs attached, so Togami counts it as good teamwork- despite the revolting flavor that leaves on his tongue.

His eyes shift left. He's hardly learned a thing about the other since that first night they'd tangoed in black deceit, which suits him finely. It's an even exchange too; knows nothing about Naegi and Naegi knows nothing about him (or just, period, really). Well he- he knows his fair share about Naegi, actually, because he's an oversharer (there's something he knows) and gets off on running his mouth (another fact he knows). He's learned, within the span of beneath fifty hours, that Naegi Makoto is freshly twenty-two years old, has a charming little sister in high school and a strange scumbag-esque roommate (who's still  _finding himself-_ Togami could just  _puke),_ adores western culture yet can't speak a lick of their language, is single but still thinks love is just so lovely (again,  _barf)_ and can eat enough caramel candy to kill a man. And it's all such useless, useless dribble, Togami curses the fact that he's even spent the time going over the mental list again.

The muffler of his Jaguar puffs like a pothead at the red light they halt at. Still those dazzling green eyes train toward the skyline.

"The city's gorgeous at night," Naegi mumbles, chin to palm elbow to car door.

Beneath them, the vehicle rumbles in idle vibrations. He wants to tell him yes, wants to tell him  _if you think this is good, you should see Tokyo on a clear evening._

"It's nothing special."

At least it draws a laugh from his lungs. "Sure, but neither am I, so it fits."

_Low self image_ is added to the mental list.

Another while of driving brings them back to the familiar iron gates of his estate. Togami enters the access code and maneuvers down the pathway to park in the driveway. Awe cups Naegi's jaw at the array of vehicles beside them, taking particular interest in the convertible with its roof retracted and set of vintage Harleys paired up in a corner stand. His fingers graze along the handle as they step past, entering the main lot by way of a short hall from the garage to the kitchen.

On an inner elbow they've each a black bag. Togami sets his on a countertop, beckoning to accept another and is instead met with the rush of cacophony. Naegi freezes to Louvre quality after the sharp suck of a gasp shocked.

Two sets of snarling barks course above the grating noise of sprinting fingernails on hardwood. Instantly they pause upon the shout of their master in garbled syllables.

"You h-have dogs..?" spills trembling as if it weren't so violently obvious. Pale flows up the contours of Naegi's face, daring to swivel his neck the most meager bit to watch the beasts in question wiggle and wag about gleefully, waist-high to Togami and rubbing themselves on him as though they'd the mindset he'd never return to them.

"There should be another one," Togami murmurs in response, gazing through the open entry from kitchen to foyer. From running sweet between perked ears, a set of his fingers lift to his mouth in a drum-popping whistle. "Tchaikovsky!  _Ko mne!"_

There's a lag in the obedience, but surely enough a third identical Doberman shoots in and knocks himself into his father's knees. Togami finds himself pressed back against a counter, the trio all yapping and hopping up against his chest. " _Nyet_ _!"_ he tells them, " _Lyezhat!"_

"Is that English?" Naegi asks once he's found again his composure. The hammering of his heart would be audible were it not for the excited stream of  _boof! boof! boof!_

Togami purses his lips in exasperation. "Russian."

"Oh," and he nods. "But aren't Dobermans...German?"

The remark is ignored. " _Lyezhat,"_ he repeats, to which they respond to this time with four paws each to the floor. " _Molodets._ Meet Naegi."

Three hundred pounds of canine burst for him all at once, and, surprisingly, hardwood is not as comfortable to land spine-first to as one may expect. Drippy noses snuffle all over him, tickling the crook of his neck into a fit of giggles, more so once he's trusted enough for the noses to lift and he's met with a tongue flat along his ear.

" _Aha-!"_ sounds with a sudden thrum to Togami's pulse, "Good boys, good boys!"

Togami snorts, grazes the ceiling with a swivel of sight. "Some  _good_ they did when someone was climbing my ivy with a knife strapped to their thigh..." He unfolds the cross of his ankles to step through the mess of squirming dogs and grasp a wrist poking from the center. Abruptly he tugs Naegi to his feet, covered in fur and trails of drool across his sweatshirt, claims the bag from him to at last drop to the counter with its match.

From the first, he withdraws a pair of double barrel pistols in gleaming ebony. For the drama alone he twirls them in his fingers before setting them to the counter, doesn't care to catch that he's had eyes rolled at his turned back.

"You fight with guns from now on," Togami tells him, producing a holster belt to fit neatly beneath his shirts. "No more close-combat foolery."

"What about a sword?" suggests Naegi. He makes the motion with his arms of striking one downward through the air. "Assassination by a really cool katana. I could be like Uma Thurman."

Togami wrinkles his expression to disapproval. "Like  _whom_ , exactly?"

His ebullience drips to naught. "You've never seen Kill Bill? _"_  Tchaikovsky protests with a soft  _boof._

"I don't have time for low-budget action movies." He steps forward, lifting the hem of Naegi's jacket and tee up to his chest. Velcro fastens tight around his middle as he mumbles lowly, "I'm already living one."

Into the two pockets of the belt he shoves the handguns. Naegi flinches the most subtle bit, stepping back against the newfound weight.

"Test your agility," is the instruction, "Take them out."

He hums thought against it, circles around the far corner of the doorway into the den. Back to the wall, he reenters sly as all hell and a maxim for destruction. A hand crosses over either side of his ribcage to snatch the hard mass under his clothes- and that's the problem. He grasps at the fabric a witless moment, then looks up to offer a sheepish color of flush. He regains himself in a tug of his clothing up his chest, propping it gauche with his wrists whilst he grapples to undo the weapons from their holsters.

Triumphantly he withdraws one, whipping it up to cock while the other clatters to the ground.

" _Nyet,_ Beethoven," Togami says as he shoos away the nose snuffling up it. He retrieves it from the ground, handing it back to his mildly humiliated trainee.

"One swift movement."

Naegi nods, refills the holster, and fails miserably another two times before Togami decides never ever does he wish to be a teacher.

"It's not as easy as you're making it sound." The complaint comes with palms to round hips. "Can I please just keep my knives?"

Togami blows disagreement through his coughing exhale. "Recall back to what I said about not fucking up your tasks. Give me the holster."

Undoing the velcro is the first thing Naegi finds simplicity in. He hands it over to a snapping grab, where Togami takes promptly to pushing his button-down from its tuck into his slacks. It remains pulled up past his chest as he fumbles with the belt behind himself. Never did he think he'd have to train his hired trained assassin, but he thinks it could be worse, thinks he could have to set newspaper down in the corner and learn more Russian. But it's a...bonding experience, at the very least, not that he craves any bondage of  _any_ kind with Naegi Makoto, but there's still that golden, coveted stretch of trust that has yet to be acquired between them. And trust would be a very good thing to establish for someone constantly at your side and constantly packing heat.

The nylon hooks together and he drops his touch. Balance is the raise of eyes with that, ones that bulge in the aversion of where another's lie.

"Don't." It's a snap sharp enough to drag that line of vision upward. A chortle quaking pitifully so tumbles out.

"Don't-Don't what?"

"Don't," his fingers grip cold the handles of each pistol, striking them out to target each a temple, "ogle me as though you've any semblance of a right to."

Staring down the barrels, Naegi looks (and feels) as though he is the most insignificant spec of a germ to ever infect the planet. In one single  _swift_   _movement_  his palm caresses the back to his neck and the color of his cheekbones glows rose dusted. He ducks a bit in humility or, perhaps, cowardice. "Ah...What do you mean? I wasn't ogling anything."

The belt comes off without any lifting of his shirt this time, set on the counter aside the guns. "I don't care what... _orientation_  you are. I'm not interested."

"Alright, jeez..." To cure the maladroit settled about, he attends fully to petting the head of the dog begging for love at his side. Togami turns to fit the items back into the bags and to swallow the sudden hue to his ears' tips, perhaps. But- the bags. Inside he thumbs through other purchases made during their trip to his most favorite nondescript, ah,  _movie_   _rental_  storefront in downtown Atsugi; several rows of ammunition, bulletproof armor, a sexy new R15 semi-auto to stash in his office wall safe. It's an impressive haul. He admires it fondly.

"But, y'know," comes from behind, "you were the one who decided to practically undress me to put the holster on."

They're facing one another by the twist of a heel. "You've got  _some_  nerve-"

"Just a joke!" Naegi holds his hands before himself in defense. The unnamed composer reaches up to nip gently at his baggy sleeve. "I'm not coming onto you, no need to get your masculinity all up in a bunch."

Togami leans back into the kitty corner of two connecting counters, folds arms in arms and ankles twinned. The strange tension begins to fade, wind drawn quiet a fragile portion.

Wresting his sleeve from its thief's mouth, Naegi presses on, "But if I were, you'd be lucky. My ass is-"

"Talk about literally  _anything_  else."

Naegi laughs in such a feelgood manner that the contagion spreads the thinnest bit to the other's lip in a tickle. He's not  _amused_  by the crude humor of this baby faced blade wielding brat, though he supposes the allure of lightheartedness is all too fancied by those past the border of midnight.

And they'd stopped for drinks in Atsugi.

Either way, Naegi's sobered now and shows it in his next melt of humor gone from the flat line of his mouth. He pulls a stool out from the island to the end of the counters, sits with elbows resting in a loose fold atop marble. Three tails wag just above the surface.

"Well, there is one thing we should talk about..." The flat line twists in crystal discomfort. "Sooner rather than later- um, Enoshima's probably not really happy about this new...arrangement."

Togami hums low in his throat, fingers holding his chin now. The thought had come across their initial discussion of whether Naegi would embrace himself a traitor, and Togami had promised with so much confidence that he needn't worry.  _"Nothing she could do to you would be worse than what I already have,"_  had been his egoed assurance. Though, after some consideration...

"If you can't even take your guns out properly, then there's no chance you'll be able to take her, and whatever mess of lackeys she's got at her disposal, out."

"Funny wordplay," Naegi says miserably as he drops forehead to forearms. He sighs into his sleeves.

Those fingers don't leave his chin, eyes don't leave their thin pierce toward nothing but vivid contemplation. Of course he's the intellect to provide solution, the issue lies in how it will be received and there in executed. Growls threaten his teeth; this is why he despises teamwork. He'd be better off doing everything for himself by himself but- but what?

His vision collects back to cleared, and he pushes up his glasses in tune to seeing Naegi having dangling fingertips licked by Frédéric Chopin, and there's his  _but_   _what_  right there in the tiny smile that graces the recipient's lips.

"Come with me," he says in a sudden epiphany, not waiting to ensure he's followed in taking to the grand staircase through the next room. As sure as he is drop dead gorgeous, the patter of footsteps shadow his own all the way to his home office where he sits prominent in the leatherbacked rolling chair.

Naegi stands stiffly to his side, the hottest touch of ashamed to be in this room again, though he's glad to at least have his hands free this time.

Togami's own travel across the keyboard before him, sweeping through deep rooted files on the monitor facing them both.

"Perhaps a trial run would suit you well before the real thing." He opens a folder, scrolls through a mess of text to find a photograph of mug-shot angle likeness. Against the screen taps his index. "Munakata Kyousuke."

A lean forward allows him to be better studied; handsome and strong jawed, in a pressed white suit and much too young to have hair to match.

"You want me to kill him?" And a nod. "...Why?"

"He's in charge of a corporation mine has done business with several times. Oversea trading, more market branding for his infamy." Togami rests his cheek to a fist as though bored by the thought. "Quite frankly, I don't like the prick. Want him gone. That's where you come in, dearest Naegi Makoto."

His brows lift an inch. "Won't killing the head of a big corporation like that have, like, consequences?!"

"Perhaps," he admits. "But not for me."

It does null to soothe his nerves, leads to a harsh exhale and promise of his safety afterward. "Now look." His finger prods the left half of the face in the photo. "Glass eye. That's his weak point."

"Glass?"

"Acrylic, PVC, what have you," he waves it off, sits firmly straight. "The point is, you come at him from his right, and he'll be none the wiser."

Concentration; Naegi appears to absorb all that he's been told, and he nods slowly a moment after it all. This is pleasing enough for Togami to clear everything from the screen and its depths, standing up to usher him forward.

"Let's get going." He flicks the light switch off before he's been trailed, cares not to listen to the  _what?_  that follows, confused and frantic. The steps are scaled to the foyer downstairs, jacket lapels straightened neatly.

"Now?" Naegi questions helplessly on their trip back through the garage. Togami had snatched the bags off the counter as well as his keys, dodging a slew of jumping Pinschers to clap shut the back exit.

In a shrug, he says, "Why not now? The sooner everyone I loathe is out of my way," he tosses the bags of artillery and accessories to him as to assemble himself proper for the mission, "the better."

A fine sheen of doubt coats Naegi's tongue as he sets to tucking a holster over his waist.


	5. Chapter 5

The sky is dark and his foreboding darker still, and the thick caramel latte of uncertainty.

"Remember the plan."

They're in each a seat of his black Lamborghini, Naegi dressed up in a shade the same and weapons concealed beneath. His knuckles are white beneath gloves at his hips.

"Approach him from the right-"

"The left _,"_ Togami corrects sharply. " _Your_ right, his left."

Naegi nods. "Right. So-"

"No," stops him again. "Left."

"I know! I'm just saying  _right,_ because I get it, okay?!" He shuffles the belt in absent fidgeting. "Approach him from the left, and...bang bang."

"Good boy," he praises, taking a glance to the rear view mirror. They've stationed themselves in a lot down the street from the target's home, one Togami has been invited to on several occasions and recalls perfectly the floorplan to. Munakata would never see it coming, even with his working eye. "He'll be wary of a stranger at his doorstep at one in the morning. However...I think you've the charm enough to persuade him against refusing you."

"What, you mean like flirt with him?"

_In a less eloquent method, sure._ His sight flicks away from the mirror. "You're the perfect culprit, really. That curvy figure of yours, those big green eyes; a man's most vulnerable in a state of seduction." Cough, low clear of throat. "Though I'm sure you've been told so before."

"Never," and he resents the smirk laced within it.

And that's the last time he'll compliment anyone's skill- "Just get in there."

A final nod, solid and steadied now, and Naegi pushes the door open to plant his boots to the pavement. He stares a long minute down the road toward his destination, a tall-peaked mansion with dew-wet grass and a sweet little swing bench out front. A deep breath, an assurance to himself, and he sets forward in one step but is halted by the calling of, "And, Naegi, one more thing."

Over a shoulder his chin tilts, attention piqued in wonder.

"Don't fuck up."

It takes several seconds to process through him, to twirl his expression into snorting contempt. Again he takes to walking away, a sway of hips and wave of hand behind him. As soon as his shadow fades from sight, Togami revs it out of the lot, makes the open road alone his mistress.

He isn't sure where exactly his goal point is on this tearing through Hadano streets, knows only the meters in front of him and nothing beyond. Knows also no way in hell would he be caught a block away from the scene of the crime should things go south, though he bids himself to stay relatively near as to be quick about picking up his cargo once he calls post mission complete. In another spark of mind hot he understands why Munakata would pick such a city to settle down in. The scenery's stunning in the best ways, all done up in classic Shogun decor and mountains galore around them. Togami takes note of the fog through the night. It's brisk about his skin once the window's been sunk into its shell. Wind caresses his hair as though a mother to its young, gentle flows and the bite of breeze to his nape.

He isn't sure exactly where he's going, but he doesn't mind taking a while to get there.

And that surprises him, really, as he's never been one to dawdle in the proverbial sunlight. Perhaps he's changing with the years; already ripe and old at a month past twenty-two wouldn't be a shock, for all the strenuous toil he's been through for the whole of them. The last time he took a break was a nap in daycare, he thinks, though the new arrangement he's found himself could provide an edge off the stress.

Never will he have to worry about enemies again, not with the quick hands and even quicker shot of his new assistant. It seems there's always some urchin after his fortune, and while he has no deep issue with parting with the cash, it's the  _principle-_ the day someone steals  _anything_  from Togami Byakuya is the same day Naegi Makoto puts a bullet in their skull.

He grins as he turns along a corner road. He rather likes the taste of that.

Yes. Naegi should prove a wonderful addition to his business.

A wonderful bitch to bend to his every whim? That, he will have to decide along with time, for two- he checks the Rolex gleaming at his wrist -three days with a person isn't enough to read them in and out, as much as he'd call himself analytical.

It's one:fourty-two when his phone vibrates against his chest. Lights glow dim around him, against the stock of liquor lining three shelves up the wall opposite himself. Condensation kisses his palm in the catch of a neat whiskey slid his way, and he tips it forward in minor gratitude as he faces outward to answer the call.

"Success?" Togami says into the first sip. The reception is faint, fighting for superiority over the clamor within the bar. Words crackle through, weak and slow, though he'd guess it's less the phone reception and more the speaker on its second end.

_"...Yes,"_  is the relief he'd hoped to hear.  _"Come...Come get me, please."_

"On my way," and he slips it back to his pocket, downs the whiskey in a single, stiff pull, and tips a ten-thousand banknote on his way out.

Naegi's waiting in the same parking lot when his car pulls in, plunked down in a corner of the short and dirty brick wall surrounding it. His head snaps up from where it had been resting on his bent knees at the discordant beep of the horn.

He sits in the passenger side without a word, clicking shut the door and staring forward in a blank haze. At the closer position, illuminated by the inner ceiling lights, Togami notes the vile mess of blood all down his clothing, realizes why black is such a fashion statement. In another once-over, he takes in the rotten grief pouring down his blood-marred cheek.

"You're crying?" And he really doesn't mean to scoff, but- "How on earth could you possibly still be so affected by death?"

"It's not death," he says lowly, "It's murder." Equally, he supposes so, has no response but the color of abhorrence through his judgement as he breaks the gear shift into reverse, tucks an arm over the headrest. "Oh, and here," draws him back to look, to hold his hand out for the one offering close-fisted toward him. When it opens, his gift stares back at him in masterfully sculpted acrylic, PVC, what have you.

"You mythic bastard," Togami marvels, and it's total lauding told by the amazement in his own eyes as he inspects it.

Naegi slumps back in his seat, palm resting to his abdomen and lids shutting. Munakata Kyousuke's eye sits despairingly on the dashboard as Togami wheels out of the dingy parking lot and floors them to their way home.

"Junko always likes me to bring back, uh...prizes, I guess, from-from the victims," is his explanation after a mile or so. "I was supposed to bring her your, um, 'balls on a silver platter'."

He can't help the snort that comes at that, switching the high beams on as they approach the oncoming overpass. "They'd make a lovely pair of earrings."

The reply is not one of bemusement, only the silent wipe of a sleeve that'll be burned at the end of the hour across his face, streaking it with more remnants of plasma. His shift in demeanor is evident, Togami spies. Naegi's never once been so dismal...so  _quiet_ , something he'd normally pay to get out of the ever-palavering little fool. Now, though, it places him in only the strongest unease. The drive feels thrice as long.

After a ways, once they've reached their province of the oncoming cityscape, Naegi pipes up with a small, "Uh, you missed my street."

Togami blinks behind the streetlights reflecting off his glasses. He...knew that, surely. Surely he knew that. He's, "Taking the backroads," of course. "...I don't deserve to have to drive through that filthy slum you call a neighborhood."

It's characteristic enough of him for Naegi to accept, sighs himself back into half lain against the door. Once Togami actually finds the backroads he's taking, and thanks silently any god out there for their actual existence, the ride is smooth and swift and they're parked on that familiar curb rich in disaster. The Corolla sits dormant a meter ahead.

This silence is not of dismay but rather discomfort- that awkward little two step of  _you can uhhh get out of the car now_  that Togami cares not to waste time further on. His lips part to speak, to tell him out, but is instead faced by a turn toward him, that tear-stained face fixed upon him in such a way to clench his chambers cold.

"Do you..." His words are dove's wings. "Do you want to come inside? I'm...definitely not going to sleep tonight, um...yeah."

Despite the lingering rot, Togami finds himself saying, "...I suppose," for a reason he cannot fathom. He decides the reason is to get Naegi to quit all that oh so unbecoming moping, and perhaps he'll get some more insipid coffee out of the deal.

Either way, he unbuckles his seatbelt, steps out onto the sidewalk and awaits his tour guide to do the same. Naegi takes care in stripping his sweatshirt off, tosses it into the backseat along with a pair of ruined gloves and the holster he'd worn this time above his undershirt. Internally, Togami commends this efficiency, watching him scrub as best he can the marks of red off his visible skin.

They take the steps the stairs and step the stairs again, instructed by a quick finger to gorgeous lips that he's to stay quiet a moment whilst the latch is being undone. It twists back into place once they're inside.

Naegi begins an absent bubble of conversation as he leads them through the kitchen and into the living room on the wall's opposing side.

"-and I- oh!" He's self conscience in the light of sky blue eyes turned to face him. "Hi, Kuwata...you're still up?"

The roommate in question sits on one of two short beige couches, illuminated by the glow of ESPN. Behind the three-seater sofa is a door on either side, the one nearest him shut and the other hung open and dark inside. It's adjacent to a third door, wide open to the view of a full bed, dresser, mirror. He thinks the amenities to be not nearly as disgust-provoking as the building's exterior, rather a respectable place for a trio of freaks and geeks to inhabit. One geek (or freak, Togami hasn't quite decided yet) in particular waves at them now, collecting his attention from judging the furnishing to listening to him.

"Hey, guys. Little late to be doing construction shit, ain't it?" He laughs a short chime. Naegi joins him in messy quake of false humor as well, while Togami stands idle and thinks it a stupid substitute to say in place of his true occupation, but offers no response other than the brushing of imaginary lint from his sleeve. The player on the screen pitches it ninety-two miles per hour.

"Yeah," and Naegi rubs at his own shoulder as though it aches. "We wanted to finish up the plans for this new gazebo thing a client wants. It's gonna look really cool once it's all done." Togami thinks he's digging himself deeper than the burned remains of his victims, but still, he inputs nothing. "I'm going to shower really quick, too," he says next, "Gotta get all this paint off me."

Diamond eyes loll in an exhausted swivel. To a hospitable, "Oh, and make yourself at home, Togami," on Naegi's way past into that third bedroom and behind another door within, Togami makes himself at home by standing stiff in the same spot as when he'd been entered.

Kuwata peers at the television with deep intent. It boggles him how anyone could get enjoyment out of watching  _sports,_ then dismisses it as straight man's culture and allows his thoughts to curl back to himself. Within minutes, there's steam pouring under the crack of that third in what he assumes is Naegi's own bedroom.

"Hey, richboy," the gremlin on the couch says to him, equally as misty. A glance snaps toward him, shaking a carton of Marlboros and grinning like a dope. "Care for a smoke?"

Togami's second trip to the outdoor patio is just as infuriatingly impeded as the last, and he'd very nearly picked the table up and thrown it over the balcony ledge on his way by, but nicotine's cheap morphine and he's back to his sedated composure after two drags.

The tip of his cigarette is a glowing ember in the nighttime sky. Still there are no stars to be seen beside it. And he still doesn't care, but it tugs him in the worst way to think how disappointing it must be for someone else. That's called...em- emp something, but it's not something he's ever experienced, and doesn't know why anyone would want to. Flick. Drag. It doesn't feel any fucking good.

"Listen, man," draws his emotions away from the sick vulnerability. "I'm gonna be blunt here. There's no fuckin' way you're a construction manager."

Faze him it does not; Togami leans a forearm to the railing, breathes a gray cloud into the night. "What gave it away, was it the fact that nothing new has been built in this city since Malice Mizer was on the radio, or the startling lack of upper body strength in my employees?"

Smoke spills from Kuwata's guffaw. "Yeah, Naegi gets winded climbing the stairs, don't really think he'd be so good at building houses."

Quiet passes between. Togami wants, truly, to know what the goal of this conversation is, why he's been offered a smoke and a heart-to-heart by someone he's met once. The answer follows a gust of wind, the rustle of the synthetically ugly goatee at the chin he scratches next before he spills, "...I don't know what it is you  _do_  do, but...just keep him out of too much trouble, alright? Something tells me that wasn't just paint on his pants before."

"I can't promise anything," and he never can, really. Ashes tumble to the concrete. "But you've no reason to doubt my competence."

"No, yeah, I get that," Kuwata laughs, the staid rim round his voice now vanished. "Guess you're right. He sure likes ya, at least. Never stops running his trap about you recently."

"Oh?" he dares.

Kuwata nods. "Yeah. Said barely a sentence about the other bitch the whole time he worked for her, but I could practically write your biography." It comes with a goodhearted nudge to his shoulder, a thin smirk finishing the combo. "Just make sure he doesn't end up in the ground somehow. His sister really needs him, and you and I do, too."

He drops his shortened butt into the ever so classy red solo filled with water ashtray. On the surface, it sizzles meekly. "Such a bold statement, considering it doesn't breathe a fraction of truth on my end."

"Alright, tough guy." They stand in tandem after Kuwata's ditched his cancer stick with a flick over the railing. Static lights guide them to the den, where Naegi is seated criss-cross on the loveseat to the left, hair fluffy from the fresh soak, hoodless gray pullover warm and soft and a size too large. Eyes drag down him, to his attention directed at the cellphone in his hands, to the creamy length of each leg poking from itty bitty shorts and connecting to calf-rise socks. He's frustratingly cute, the whiskey and tobacco whisper in Togami's ear, but the most he allows them is to choose his seat on the same sofa's second cushion.

The other sofa is Kuwata's domain, stretching an arm over the back and legs thrown over the side. Baseball had been traded for a news station while they'd been out, perhaps, Togami thinks, out of sheer paranoia, furthered by his peek to the small half-shattered phone screen to his side scrolling through local updates.

Togami finds it all exasperating, finds it all pathetic. He watches the curtains billow behind the TV, open to inhale the sounds of the street below. An engine revs and tears off with tires screeching. A tree rustles its leaves together. Kuwata chuckles at a report of a convenience store robbery a few towns away.

"These kids and their crime," he says almost nostalgically. "Petty theft I can dig. It's the rape and murder shit I don't understand."

"What a hero," drips sarcastically into Togami's knuckles. A different shade strangles the other, head snapping up from staring at his phone to acknowledge the proclamation.

"Wha-Whadaya mean, Kuwata?" He blinks, swallows. "I mean, I mean you're  _right,_ just...sort of a random thing to say.. _."_

In the dim lights, he shrugs, news reporters glinting back in his irises. "I mean, if my girl's coming at me with a knife, of course I'm gonna fight back, but... But I just don't get people who kill for no reason. It's  _fucked."_

Naegi sits in silent stillness a long note. Togami watches the profile of his face contract with conflict.

"Yeah...it's fucked," startles the voyeur. "But sometimes...people do things because they have to."

Arms push in fists in a long outstretch of muscles. "Guess you're right," and it's that simple, conversation closed and remote snatched off the coffee table to find the game again. Naegi melts back into the cushions behind him, tips his head to the ceiling.

" _Relax,"_ Togami practically must plead. Without lifting his head, Naegi cracks open an eye and leers sideways toward him. "I can't take your ridiculous paranoia. God, it's like coaxing a junkie through withdrawals- and for all I know, it could be that."

"I've never touched a hard drug in my life," Naegi is quick to snap. He breathes out heavy. "I mean, I've  _touched_ it, since I had to handle it all the time, but I've never tried anything worse than weed."

"Weed?" comes from the room's other side. They'd made careful to keep their voices low in the weight of their conversation, though can't conceal trigger words from sonar hearing, it seems. Kuwata leans his brows up in question. "You guys lookin' to get stoned, 'cause- wait, uh, Togami ain't a cop, right?"

"Not until I finish academy training." It's inductive to laughter.

"Alright, alright. Wouldn't be the first time Naegi brought home some tail with an FBI license." The crowd cheers on the screen, captures his rapid attention span a split moment. "And not my type of FBI either, if you get me."

He doesn't, but asking would imply he cares to find out. The reigns are taken by smaller, gentler hands, to say, "Kirigiri isn't  _tail,_ Kuwata, she's my best friend."

Togami does not point out the fact that he himself hasn't been corrected for being classified the same, concerned only with, "Your best friend is an FBI agent?"

Naegi looks to him. "Kinda. She's more of like, murder investigation and crime scenes and stuff."

To the equal astonishment of the other participants, Togami barks out three coarse laughs, a haughty  _HAHAHA!_ rather than his normal scoffing, smirking routine to express scorn. "That's...so devastatingly ironic, I'd be hard pressed to find a situation more worthy of literature."

Naegi sits in battered quiet, while Kuwata cackles a bright bit. "Do you even understand half the shit that leaves your mouth, dude?" And it isn't the least bit mean-spirited, a joke and a laugh between friends of friends who've known each other three days, except no one's friends and Togami quite tightly despises a joke and a laugh at his expense.

"My IQ is higher than the substantial amount of hours you spend sitting on your ass watching Sports Center and playing with yourself." The longwinded insult ends in a huff, a rest of chin back to closed fist.

Stun runs through Kuwata a moment, then he cracks with laughter into an upward curl and falls back to lain. "Okay-  _jeez! -_ I'll give you that one. Guess you could write my biography, too."

As much as he wishes to remain stone-faced and solid, Togami can't stop the beat of a quirk to his bottom lip. He lives for acclaim.

And though he thrives well, the recipient does not in a matter of one inning when he's tossed like a limp carcass across the cushions and snoring as though that's his life's calling.  _S_ _o precious when they're sleeping_ , he thinks in disdainful facetiousness.

He faces Naegi next, legs drawn to his chest and forlorn gaze past the curtains.

"You're ready now," rattles him a touch, causes his head to tilt and a short noise of confusion to leave him.

A loose cross of arms, chin downward as he speaks in cool softness. "Munakata was your trial run, don't you recall? His successful execution means you've passed the practice exam. You're ready for the SATs of ripping out the guts of one Enoshima Junko."

"Oh," is all he has to muster. "Uh, that's great. Could we not talk about…any of that tonight? I don't think I can stomach any more of it."

"If you vomit in my general direction, it will be the last thing you do."

He forces a laugh at it. "No, I won't," and deflates into a sigh.

Togami bristles. Breeze kisses his hands as they come to scrub his face beneath his glasses. He takes them off, blinks as they're set in his lap. A curl of thought hammers through his mind- back to his earlier resentment. Naegi has no place feeling sorrow or guilt, feeling as though he's on borrowed time after each pull of the trigger and flick of a match. He knows, later or sooner, that those ill feelings will be misplaced upon himself rather than Naegi's own actions, and that's foolery he cannot afford. His chest expands before an exhale. That's just one more thing he'll have to beat out of him, metaphorically or otherwise.

"I've never seen you without your glasses on," Naegi says quietly once his palms have been lifted.

As they slip back into place above a tight grimace, "You've known me three days."

"Sure," another chortle, airy and wondrous. "But even when Enoshima showed me her creepy file thing- like the one you had on Munakata. You always had them on in every picture."

"Huh," he says in a way that just  _oozes_  mocking, "it's almost as if I need them to see."

Delirium of night and of all that has passed them moves Naegi close to hysterics over the quip. He buries his face in his hands once he's caught himself back to normalcy, breathing out faded giggles before dropping them and breathing fresh. Palms to his bent lap, he turns his body full to the other. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting you to ever be…funny, I guess."

Glare. "I'm witty when you don't piss me off."

"Right… Aww, I didn't piss you off?" It's sweet and far from sincere-sounding.

"Momentarily, yes."

For all its scarceness, a smile still presses Naegi's mouth. As is his calling, Togami rolls his eyes, rolls them all the way to stopping at the far wall behind the television now glaring the post game highlights. The wall clock tells him it's nearing four.

That brings his legs beneath him, knees cracking stiff from their long position sitting. Ripe and old, he thinks to himself, fixing the cuffs to his jacket as he excuses his leave.

"I'll be going now," he says, to which the second nods short.

"Okay," still with that smile. "Thanks for hanging out for a bit."

The nod this time belongs to Togami as he's led by his always hospitable host to the front door. They stand on either side a moment, staring toward the floor and wall alike.

"Well, um, drive safe," Naegi tells him, to which the only response is, "Drive safe _ly_."

One hand clutching the doorknob, he tips his head into exasperation, proved fake by the grin still taunting those perfect lips. "Togami Byakuya, you are something else."

Then it's a flick to his hips that dismisses the claim, though he cannot deny the satisfaction dabbed in his smirk as he takes to the stairs. The door does not click until he's reached the bottom.

Expensive shoes tap to the concrete flooring through the second story, and he glances briefly to  _2B_  in some flavor of homage. He moves briskly to the first floor and through the swinging exitway down three last stone steps, the pavement just lapping the toe of those expensive shoes before they freeze, and the rest of his body with them.

Each part to the elaborate, immaculate exit reverses as if rewound on a cassette, drags him back up to that door upon which he knocks so hard the number tacked to the outside wiggles.

It's thrown open after the first one, knuckles raised against open air and the new sight of Naegi Makoto, no changes since they'd last met besides the owlish look to his eyes and a bitten cookie in one hand.

"What?" he whispers harsh, swallowing to free more his speech. "Did you forget someth-"

"My car is gone."

"What?" repeats anew, tugging a string of growls like a scarf from a magician's conniving sleeve out of Togami's downturned scowl. He snatches the cookie from his hold. It breaks against the hallway floor before being crushed to dust under his heel.

Naegi pouts, but decides there's a slightly more pressing matter to deal with once he's met with more violent snarls.

"Some half-baked hood rat stole my fucking  _car_."

Another thing Naegi decides, after a particularly discordant snore from the next room, to shut the door against his back and bring the talk into the hallway. Togami steps back, body convulsing with the power behind his labored, livid breaths.

"Are you sure?" All too late is it a third decision that this was not the best course of speech, indicated by the whip of a glare his direction, the flame that billows off his tongue next.

"Am I sure? Hm, oh, allow me to check again!" He clips over to the short gray wall, a coiled radiator set below a window he pushes fingers to and shoves open. They next go to curl about the sill to guide his lean outwards of the screenless hole. "Hello? Twenty-million yen Lamborghini? Are you still out there?!"

"Okay, okay!" He beckons him back inside with a hand to his shoulder, snaps the window shut with the free one. "So, your car got stolen. ...You've got ten more."

Evidently, that's terribly wrong, wrong,  _wrong_ also. "I wouldn't care if I had one hundred more, that isn't the point. The day someone steals  _anything_  from-"

The only interruption is his crash-course train of thought. That taste returns to his mouth, and that low curve to his brows, and he's leaning inward to the light in Naegi's saucers for eyes like a moth to a bulb, a flashlight illuminating shadows on the faces of campground storytellers. Naegi recoils against the door again.

Closing in the distance sundering them, he breathes hot and lethal into his face, "I've got your next mission."

A slow smirk follows it. Naegi stares a long moment, then swallows tightly.

"Okay." And he nods, but loses the minor confidence just afterward. "But...how will we find out who did it?"

"You said your friend's a crime scene investigator?" He steps forward all the while he speaks, pushing past Naegi to reenter the home as if it were his own. In a flash he's trailed, paled and frantic at the suggestion.

"We can't go to her for this!" His voice drops an octave as they walk into the living room, stops once Togami does and faces him bold, waving hands wildly with his words. "She's  _too_ good. She'll find the culprit, find the car, find  _everything_ we left in it and my life will unravel before my eyes!"

Togami bears no sympathy. He continues his plight, entering the third open bedroom with a shadow close at his heels. "Ever thought of working in retail?"

It scrapes every aged scar beneath his skin in every wrong way. "You can't do this, Togami. We can figure out another way to find your car, I promise."

As the whining pokes his ears, he sets to folding his glasses atop the single-lamped night stand, sits on the bed to lose his shoes next to it. "We'll do exactly as I say to. Goodnight."

"What-?" The heat of the discussion had distracted Naegi from the visuals, though his brain all catches up as one now and he watches as his bed is claimed and comforter lain beneath. "You're just-just gonna sleep here? In my bed?"

"Where else?" His eyes close, head to pillows and hands folded neatly atop his middle. "I've no car anymore to take myself home in."

Naegi huffs. "There's another couch in the living room, y'know..."

"Yes," he says. "And I'm sure you'll find it very comfortable."

Little does he love more than getting the last word. Though, the irritated grumbling that chases it comes close to second place. He senses the movement beside him, closer now, and the bed's second empty side has its pillow thieved before the room falls silent and he's left in delicious solitary confinement.


	6. Chapter 6

When he wakes, the air smells like lavender and sucralose, and he'd rather be dead.

"Mornin', sunshine!" Kuwata greets over the thrum of a radio as he enters the kitchen. The stove to the door's left sizzles with hotcakes. Togami's temple throbs.

He resents the way the chair sounds dragging against the tile, but places himself down regardless, eyes a mess of empty mugs beside a bubbling percolator. It's the center of his world, so much so that hardly does he notice the table guest until she presents him with her voice aside his pouring of coffee into one.

"So...slept in Makoto's bed last night, did you?" Her obnoxious teenager giggles do nothing but piss him off.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" And she shakes her head, chair tilting back on its hind legs.

"It's Sunday, duh!"

She means no harm by any of her words, though Togami cares not to handle the slightest hint of mocking, not after sleeping five hours, not by someone who's biggest stress in life is calculus homework. Knuckles go white around the handle to his mug.

"Where is... _Makoto,_ anyway?" his sharp tongue must wonder, must afterward feign true interest by focusing on his drink.

Answer comes from over Kuwata's shoulder, scraping a spatula to a burnt spot of batter. "Out on the patio. Hey, tell him to get his ass in here, would ya? I've got enough flapjacks to feed all of Honshu over here."

Not that he's following an order given to him- no, he's going outside, bumping past the table because he wants to see Naegi- no, wait, other way around. He doesn't want to see Naegi, he's going outside, making the coffee in the carafe slosh because he's been told to- no, wait-

When he's slipped past the door and shut it behind him, the rationale for doing so doesn't seem at all to matter. Naegi's standing there, leaning there, one forearm to the railing, legs bent slightly at the knees behind him. Still dressed as when they'd left each other in the morning's early hours. His other arm is folded upwards, pinching a cigarette between his index and thumb and making the end glow like a lost firefly. Robins chirp around the foliage under the balcony, facing outward toward the world, to the empty parking spot that churns his stomach once he approaches closer.

Naegi glances to him absently, lids half attenuated still once they go back to watching the morning pass by. Beside him, Togami stands idle, follows his train of vision. Wind knocks litter around the set of barrels across the street. A bird perches on the telephone wire nearest them, tweets a melody before soaring off.

To his lips, Naegi draws the cigarette slow, eyes shutting fully as he breathes in the smoke. It hasn't the chance to return fully back to its resting position; another set of digits thieve it away, and Togami takes in the same tender, slow suck of nicotine as his predecessor. Naegi stares blankly, then takes the mug from his second hand and intakes that instead.

It's far past sunrise, though they treat it as so in their solicitous motions and soft caresses of midmorning. Murky orange highlights the base of mountains far off in distance's throat.

"Kirigiri doesn't usually work on Sundays." The tranquility is startled by the sudden speech, and Togami's almost perturbed by how well his mind's been read.

He exhales smoke from his nose. "She'd make an exception for her best friend, would she not?"

"She would," and he sighs ripples into the coffee. "And in the same breath, she'd have me tried for manslaughter if she caught on."

Another bird dances along the highwires. Its wings flutter by its sides as though to balance. "You've managed thus far at hiding an entire drug cartel from her. How good of a sleuth could she possibly be?"

"The best in the world," he promises, stubbornly grave. "Honestly, I doubt she doesn't know. But without physical evidence, there's not much she can do- or, wants to do, probably."

"I see..." Though he doesn't, really, because what the hell kind of detective wouldn't sense the penitence in this walking billboard of emotion? And furthermore- who fucking cares about relationships? If someone's guilty, then someone's guilty.

But he himself is guilty, guilty of death and lies and two decades of gambling with fate. He flicks ash into the solo cup; sure, he's done wrong. Still doesn't mean he's punishable.

"But, we can..." A pause, a final deep, deep contemplation. Naegi outstretches his hand to trade cigarette for coffee again, takes a long drag and snubs it on the railing. "We can pay her a visit. I've been up all night and haven't thought of any better way to find your car, so..."

Behind them, the window adjacent to the pantry flies upwards. "Hey, you two," Komaru's face says through the screen. "Coming in for breakfast?"

It remains open, half tempting Togami to climb through there rather than squeeze by the table, but he's a sophisticated royal, so he takes the normal route and only curses mildly at the splash of coffee that ruins his white shirt upon bumping into the table.

"Uh, actually," Naegi begins, walking to the tall hutch of hooks and drawers and odds and ends nearest the exit to find his keys. Once claimed, they're tossed to Togami, who catches them one-handed against his chest. "We have to go to work."

"You're kidding me!" Kuwata shouts around a mouthful of syrup, as though finding personal offense in it. "I slave over a hot oven for you two, and this is the thanks I get? Pah, kids these days!"

From the other room, Naegi reemerges, hopping on one socked foot to shove his legs into dark jeans. The teasing undertone to it comes through enough for him to not feel such paralyzing culpability. "Save some, we'll be back later." Togami doesn't know why he assumes  _we_ will do anything, but does not add to the conversation besides the setting of mug into the sink.

Zip, button, stuffing of phone into pocket and feet into Martens. He grabs a jacket of fine black leather off the hook by the door, beckons Togami forward by a tilt of his chin as he pushes arms into its sleeves. "Bye, Kuwata, bye Komaru. Love you, be home soon."

To their dual chime of  _love you too,_ the front entry closes and they're bullets down the flights of stairs. Togami steps to the left front side, and tosses the keyring over the roof to where Naegi stands on the opposite side. Their doors open and slam in unison.

They say nothing the whole ride across the bridge, to the polar opposite of the dingy city corner they'd left. Day vs night- the apartments sit in a neat line, neat brick and neat sidewalks. From the parking lot they stop in (a  _parking lot!_ ) the backs of air conditioners are visible from a dozen windows. The summer heat is sticky when they exit the vehicle, much more oppressive than the day prior. Togami feels choked in his ankles to jaw attire. The one dressed for late Autumn beside him wipes sweat from beneath his bangs once they've climbed to the second story room and laid knuckles to wood in several wraps.

Waiting, waiting, tapping of foot. There's a short commotion inside, some sort of animated crashing, and a frenzy dressed up as a woman tugs the door open and huffs hard into her lungs.

"N-Naegi?!" Black wisps of hair are pushed from her forehead, clears her path of sight behind comically wide round lenses. The eyes behind them shift from the one she first addressed to the one just behind him. "And-and- oh, my God..!"

"Hi, Fukawa," says Naegi, disregarding her sudden fit of blushing, drooling, stuttering. "Is Kirigiri home?"

"She's...she's ri-right insiiide, ahaha..." A line of saliva drips down her chin. Togami's expression quirks into confusion-riddled disgust as they stride past.

Inside proves just as perfectly  _neat_  as the exterior. Togami admires the rows of shelving, housing textbooks and pleasure novels alike. There's an entertainment center on another wall of the living room the front entryway had opened up to. He guesses the owner of an Alexandre Dumas collection is not the same reason there's a Playstation sitting below the quaint television set, rather the one he follows now into the wide kitchenette like he is its own resident.

A circular table is the room's centerpiece. At it sits a woman,  _the_ woman, he presumes, fawning over an open manila folder on the tabletop.

"Hey, Kyouko." Naegi wets his lips as she glances up, blinks several beats.

"Oh...Makoto," is all she has to say before looking toward his companion. The length at which she peers at him is perturbing. "Who's-"

"Togami Byakuya!" comes with a sudden jump toward them. Starting, the namesake glares with brows lifted in that same befuddled look. The girl who'd greeted them is crouched aside him, and uh- what was her name? Fuckawa, or some other worthless mass of syllables. She ogles him like salami dangled before a starved mutt. "Togami Byakuya..! Head of the l-leading conglomerate in all of the country! H-He's even sexier in person,  _ahha!_ "

From a book clutched in her sweating palms, she produces a thin flyer, one Togami recognizes as a torn off cover of a business magazine he'd once posed for. She holds it out to him, hesitant to touch anything she's laid her filthy hands on, though takes it regardless to examine the photo. Attractive as ever, an elegance unimaginable in his crossed legs and tall-backed scarlet throne. He rests a hand to his face just below the bolded caption  _LESSONS IN SUCCESS; Togami Byakuya unveils secrets to becoming this century's most prominent entrepreneur before the age of 30._ He hadn't, of course, but the gimmick had reeled in thirty thousand reads and royalties almost as handsome as himself. But- but he's drawn back to the present by the trio of stares on him, one bearing practical hearts for pupils as she offers him a pen.

"Would-Would you do me the honor of your signature, Togami-sama?!" Her voice cracks into a shriek as she says his name. It rebirths the dull remnants of his earlier headache.

His thumb lifts from where it grips the image, figuring he may as well grant her something to drool over for the rest of her pitiful life, but finds the pad of it etched in something hideously...gooey. He looks downward to it again, rubbing the mark against his index finger to be rid of it, and notices the pattern of pink lipstick stains all across the image he'd been too occupied admiring before to detect.

"No," he says shortly to her, handing the dirtied cover back. His fingers swipe gainst his pants before going to a fold over his chest.

Those hearts for eyes shatter in one beat. "Ah!" And she bows, stuffing it back into the middle of the book. "R-Right, you wouldn't want to-to ruin the picture! So  _smaaart_  and calc-calculating!" The pen tucks behind her ear as she bows again, skirting past him to sit at the table beside the second woman, who'd since gone back to scanning her files.

"Uh...anyways?" breaks through the stagnant brew of awkward. Naegi places himself down across from his friend. "Are you busy, Kyouko? We have to talk to you about something."

"Extremely," she scares him back with. "I wouldn't be working on a Sunday morning if I weren't."

"Right, well, ah-" His finger hooks to the collar of his pullover and tugs a tad. "Could we at least...get in line, or whatever?"

Two gloved hands press flat to the wood of the table. Alike, the other three stiffen. "Munakata Kyousuke disappeared from his home last night. The head of the... _second_ leading conglomerate in the country." Her eyes flick briefly to the tall blonde brooding in her kitchen. "I have zero leads, zero pieces of evidence, and forty-eight hours to figure it all out."

"Oh, that sounds tough." Internally, he prays for Naegi's resolve not to crack, and he holds strong to it. "Any idea what could've happened?"

"Considering his wife is gone as well, I'd guess we're looking for a murder suspect."

That catches Togami's interest. More intently he watches the conversation unfold.

Naegi shows no external signs of disruption. "Really? Wow...I can't believe it- Why would someone just...kill two people for no reason?"

"Human beings work in mysterious ways," is her final proverb, tending again to the myriad of papers and crime-scene photos. A glance exchanges between the two boys, Naegi offering only a shrug while Togami's pointed glare forces him to speak. "Uh, but, um-" he coughs, capturing her attention vaguely. "Togami's car got stolen."

A shrill gasp leaves Fukawa, bringing her hands to her mouth as though he'd just announced a bomb threat. Kirigiri frowns more than is perpetual. "And you believe grand theft auto takes importance over a double murder."

"N-No, no!" He fans fingers in a frantic wave of defense. "I'm just saying-"

"Just saying you'd ought to pay closer attention to what goes on around you," snaps a fed-up Togami. "What's the number one thing on a culprit's mind once he's committed the crime? The getaway, naturally. And he'll do so by any means necessary."

A finger rests to her chin as she examines him. "Interesting how you refer to said culprit with male-gendered pronouns. Dare I say you attribute acts of violence to masculinity by instinct?"

Togami cocks his jaw left. "Dare I say you nitpick meager details to distract from the fact that you've no proper defense?"

It's a sword through her middle. Hands fold in front of her mouth, eyes shut and leant on elbows forward. "...Tell me where your car disappeared from."

A short vowel from Naegi is drowned out by another stealing the spotlight. "A parking lot in Hadano." And he knows her next question will concern alibi, so he adds, "We walked to a bar down the street, came back and the spot was void. We had to call a cab to return to Naegi's apartment, where I then spent the night." He pushes his glasses up in one swift poke, flooded with the overwhelming emotion of having bested her.

"You should have taken a cab regardless, if you went to a bar." She taps a small collection of papers into an even stack, face unchanging as she tucks it into the folder and shuts it. "But I'll look into it. Details of the car?"

"Black Lamborghini, license plate 500 36-91."

Kirigiri points sharply to her side. "Fukawa. Write that down."

She squeaks, caught from her reverie staring at the tall blonde brooding in the kitchen. The pen behind her ear moves to her scrambling fingertips, opening the thick notebook and scrawling the information rapidly. Togami pieces together the relationship between them more, figuring her as an assistant type rather than the romance he'd presumed beforehand; no longer can he picture this blunt-banged blunt-voiced detective wanting to be anyone's lover. As for Fukawa...just, no.

The loveless detective nods solidly once all notes are taken. "I will do my best."

"Thank you, Kyouko." And he bows to her after rising, to which she again nods her head.

They take their cue to go. A quick and beneficial encounter; Togami rather likes the feeling of not wasting a second of his precious life. It's the hand on the knob and the twist of the wrist when they're halted by the stark smell of dirt and pathos.

"Ah, T-Togami-sama." She near writhes under his stare, index fingertips pressing together in anxiety. "I don't mean to be brash, but could I get your number? For-For business only, of course! In case you ever need a n-new assistant, or anything like that,  _ehehe_..."

The breathless to her words irks him to the hot molten core. A roll of his eyes, and hers widen in unimaginable euphoria as he reaches into his jacket pocket, only to retrieve a jangle of keys. He drops them into Naegi's palm. "Honey, go warm the car up."

All at once, the vitality leaves her, mouth frozen in a wide half-grin of new horror. It takes all of his control not to bark a laugh in her disgusting face.

"Good day to you, Kirigiri Kyouko," is his goodbye, ignoring the other girl's dramatic drop to her knees. He flicks the door shut without waiting for a response.

The echo reverberates inside. At her seat at the table still, Kirigiri presses the manila folder back opened. "He had a coffee stain on his shirt."

In the car, the harmony's the open close of the passenger side, the stretch of seatbelt over his chest, and the final crescendo: "His wife, too?"

Naegi out lets a breath as if he'd been straining it within him, expectant. His forehead falls to the steering wheel. "She started to scream, I had no choice."

Scorching quiet drags betwixt as the vehicle shifts into drive, veers out of the lot back where they'd come from. Togami watches out the window for a stretch of the land around them, concrete lots slowly turning to bustling city life. "Where are the bodies?"

After such a period of quiet, Naegi blinks at the unanticipated inquiry. "...Burned, like always. Hah-" His shoulders pinch inward. "I had to pick up smoking so people would stop asking why I always have a lighter on me."

Without meaning, it is added to his collection of knowledge about him. To it also, Togami reminds himself,  _has a very comfortable and good-scented bed._

His nose scrunches in on itself. They pass a cluster of forest. Weirdo.

There are perhaps, a lot more subtle things to add as well. Naegi wears a size six boot. Naegi plays cat-care games on his phone. Naegi's the most insanely interesting person he's ever met and he doesn't understand how or why- or, not that last one. No, Naegi Makoto is not interesting, he is  _intriguing_. Togami's intrigued by why someone…someone like  _him_  would be someone like him, would be so caring and soft, and yet all the same wield a flesh-tearing set of nails on hands. Hands so petite and delicate all the same, Togami adds. There's something… _off_  about this man, the one with knuckles gripping the wheel and hardly daring to lift his foot a millimeter off the brake as they sit now, awaiting the pass of a squirrel across the street in front of them.

There's definitely something off about him, and if what it takes to uncover it is keeping him a practical addition onto his own hip, Togami intends fully to do so.

The rodent jitters onto the sidewalk and shoots up into high branches. Naegi lets out a relieved breath, and presses onward.

Weirdo.


	7. Chapter 7

His phone rings two days later.

He's gotten some calls in between, of course. But this is the one he answers with such swiftness he has to remind himself to let it chime a bit longer. No need to seem desperate, now.

After three rings, he can't wait any longer, and slides it to green and to a press against his cheek.

_"Hey,"_  the voice carries a sense of familiarity Togami has never once experienced.  _"Kirigiri called. She found your car."_

Perched tall in his office chair, Togami lights into a flask pop of excitement. "Details."

A shuffling sounds against the receiver.  _"Well,"_  his volume drops,  _"There wasn't much left of it. Apparently the dude just stripped it for parts and pushed the rest into a beach off the bay."_

Viciously, he curses this. Stolen from, property destroyed- Blood darkens the warmth of his cheekbones, but he listens further.

_"They think it was this one guy,"_  says Naegi into a swallow. " _His name's…O-something. He leads a biker gang, though, and they have him at the station in Atsugi where the car was found."_

"Well, it's his lucky day." The phone presses between shoulder and ear as Togami stands, shucks a jacket over one arm. "The bastard just made bail."

Exchanged are more details of this and of that, and Togami's never glided so quickly through the streets, top down on his sleek convertible and wind ravishing perfect hair in such a delightful way. He swings into park against a curb, a lean on the horn his only greeting. A figure clad in head to toe black hops down three concrete steps and jaunts toward the car.

"Nice," Naegi comments once he's seated inside, running his palm along the open siding. The rear view mirror tilts a touch, then it's two hands on the wheel again in a cloud of exhaust that pushes them on their way.

Togami's running on sheer resentment alone, he thinks. Not once does he care to pass glances toward anything but the road ahead, even once his literal partner in actual crime turns lips spread to speak over the roaring breeze.

"Uh, Enoshima stopped by," bites his eardrums throbbing. "While I was at your place yesterday. Komaru was at school, thankfully. But Kuwata told me-  _hah_ , well he told me he thinks she's hot as hell," brunette strands of fluff obscure his stare, "But he told me, she's apparently been tearing up the city looking for me. Says I owe her big time."

Fingertips grip tighter the suede wheel cover. At a crossing, they flick to twist the radio dial to some alternative shit he couldn't care to learn the name of. And blasts it.

"Don't worry about her."

That's his only wisdom to bestow to him, flooring it once the light glows again fluorescent kelly.

He speeds the normal three quarters of an hour drive in thirty-one minutes, slowing only at the sight of the police station over the windshield. Naegi dangles an arm over the door. The billowing of his coat sleeve comes to a stop along with the vehicle.

Several cars all embellished on the sides by  _APD_  line the lot beside the large brick building. Togami shakes his hair out as he saunters up to the front entrance, Naegi in close tow.

It's dull inside, several phones chiming and an attendant or two walking slow cross the first hall. He wastes several minutes bantering with the one by the door, assuring he's got business to do here and at last giving a gruff telling of his full name. The attendant peers at him, though allows them both entry to the waiting area of chairs and vending machines. It reminds him of a hospital. That pisses him off more.

They spy through an open doorway a table and chair set, then another, and another, and realize they've found just where they need be. Another several meters inward and black boot bottoms stick to the tile. Togami pauses, looks to Naegi in scorn.

"That's him," and he points into one room connected to this hall they stalk through. A tanned and toned man of impossible muscle sits cuffed across from an officer with his back to them. "His name's Oowada Mondo. That's him."

A thin brow quirks. "And just how, exactly, do you know this all?"

Pale overtakes his complexion. "…Just trust me. It all makes sense together now. That's who we're looking for."

In perhaps reckless abandon, Togami decides to obey and clips a step into the room. Instantly, all eyes are on him, the officer turning to rebuke his appearance within.

"Civilians aren't allowed past the point of the waiting area," he demands, "You'll have to-"

"Oh, but I'm only here to retrieve my  _darling_  little boy," Togami bites, daggers glaring toward the perpetrator, who's lilac eyes widen into a noise of confusion. "Oowada-chan, don't you want to come home to daddy?"

Occupied in the doorway, Naegi stands in discomfort. The officer divides looks between the trio.

"If you want to place bail, do so at the front desk." Togami lingers a moment, smirking, smirking, smirking, before he steps out with a twirl of the waist.

He returns to the same attendant as before, while Naegi sets himself in one of the seats lined against the walls. He shuts in on himself, breathes through nostrils a hot moment, looks back up and the other's already returned to him. Peculiarity dots Togami's expression. "Let's go," and to a curl of fingers, Naegi complies.

Kaleidoscope colors cuddle his vision. Togami sways, or, his own vision does, clears in a blink that instead deafens him. Mouths move and hands shake, and Naegi's a child in the spotlight of a school play, his starring role, his-

Car doors slam one two three. Blink blink. Rear view mirror. Oowada Mondo is sitting in the backseat of the convertible, collar starched and wrists cuffed behind him still.

Togami smiles the whole drive back to his house.

Then they're in his garage, and, and why's time so freely skipping, Naegi wishes he knew, delved inches into his brain, his own personal layer of fuego. This is not a piece to his jigsaw puzzle, not the way Togami yanks this delinquent out of the car by his shirt and shoves him toward the backyard bulk head. "Wouldn't want to disturb the pups," he snarls, more sinister than any pup, dog, wolf. Sweat drips through Naegi's clavicle.

Then Oowada Mondo's sitting in a shitty plastic chair in Togami's basement, tied round the middle by white knit rope and taped at each extremity. It reminds Naegi of his first time here as well, here in this house where the sunlight hardly hits but the stars shimmer fond at night. Hell, it'd be the damn near exact same, if-

A final stretch of duct tape slices off, presses across the tight lined mouth of their victim.

"Have fun on your little joyride, dearest Oowada Mondo?"

No noise leaves him, not a protest nor muffled denial. Togami laughs, cold and hollow, strolls back, forth. Naegi's stomach goes seasick as he follows the metronome of his path.

"You know," he starts, "I don't take very kindly to those who cross me. Well-" His head jerks toward the one standing behind him. Oowada's pinprick pupils follow, scanning Naegi with that  _look_ , a scared rabbit in the maw of a coyote, that look he faces each and every time he's in this situation. But- Togami's gestured to him, and…when did he pick up the gun? Naegi supposes it doesn't matter when he got it, more so what he intends to do with it. But, but, but, he's just said  _well_ , and he's just gestured toward him, tongue sopping against the words, "this one plotted my murder, and I let him off with a warning. But that didn't upset me quite like you have."

His fist catches hold of fabric, other hand clutching cold the handle to his pistol that digs so delectable into the definition beneath his chin. At last Oowada breaks, wrists flapping and head squirming, making  _those_  sounds that drill Naegi's head like crunching glass.

"Having my property stolen and dismantled does not rest well with me," Togami spits, flame against kerosene. "You don't realize how hard I've worked, the depths I've gone to all my life to assure I come out on top. And you-" another laugh "-you thought you could waltz into my life and claim my hard work as your own?"

_Why won't he struggle, why won't he fight?!_  The tape rips from his mouth so quickly it leaves raw burn marks. "And why is that, Oowada Mondo?"

He thrashes a violent note, still attempting to keep his chin off of the weapon's touch. "L-Look, man, I wasn't after you. It was  _him_ ," a pull of a his jaw toward Naegi, still stiffly inching backwards against a musty wall. "I was just doing what I was told-"

"By Enoshima, right?" Naegi pipes up finally, vision swimming and hardly catching his nod. "I recognized you, at-at the police station. You work for her, too."

"She promised me protection!" he spits in response. "After I- a-after my brother died. She promised…" Trail, trail, desperate floundering.

The trigger clicks softly. Oowada strangles out a garbled protest.

"A lovely tale of pity," the assailant commends. "Unfortunately for you, my heart died long ago."

Click. Click. Pull.

Naegi's back falls to the wall. It's all too fast it's all too blurry and he can't see and it hurts and his last breath is a harsh gasping and he can't see he can't think he can't see he can't…he can't see can't feel it's empty dark he's gone.

* * *

"I'm truly beginning to doubt your ability to perform."

The room is a degree under freezing. He lifts his head, finds his sight spotted in misplaced black, and lays the throb back down. Below him, the material is soft, cushion buttons digging into his aching tendons. Vaguely does he hear typing, clicking utensils, vents blowing air, but it all runs together as one color. Once vision returns properly, he turns his cheek to the presumed couch upon which he rests, looks at a mirrored set of furniture with another resting atop it.

Togami sits on a long white sofa, computer in his lap and a take out container of tuna maki beside him. He spots the whites to Naegi's eyes the split second they flutter apart between thick layers of lashes and liner. There's a cough from the invalid's couch across the living room. No further attempts are made at sitting up.

"What…what happened?"

Another row of typing. Togami pauses, appears thoughtful a moment. "You passed out, I dragged your ragdoll of a body onto that couch, got caught up on some work, and ordered lunch. Sashimi?"

Food is his last concern, guts threatening a churn at the scent of fish and rice. His head shakes once, gulping air to refute the nausea.

"Did…anything happen between that? Why did I pass out?"

He chews a length of Nori at the end of his terribly out-of-place fork. "Because you're weak, and rather incompetent."

Togami watches the emotions play out over his face; uncertainty, fear, astonishment. In an abrupt flash of muscle, he sits upright, and all Togami can think-  _took you long enough._

"You…you killed someone," he says. "The guy who stole your car- Oowada. You shot him."

"Hm?" Rice works its way down his throat, rocked scotch chasing it down. "Have you gone mad with fever? Shall I fetch you an aid?"

Knee wobbles under him. "You killed him, Togami." His finger trains in an accusing point that the recipient just does not care for at all. "You killed him. And you liked it."

"Naegi," he snaps, shutting the device in his lap and placing it beside him as to fold one long, immaculate leg over the other, "if I'd done anything even close to it, I'd admit to it. Sort out your dreams and your reality before you make accusations."

Fire flickers in those green eyes. Then it dulls, and he drops down to the couch again, hands in his lap and extinguished embers downcast.

"I…it didn't feel like a dream…" A gnaw to his lip, release. "Where's Oowada then? Did we really ever even find your car?"

No fool is he to realize this presents a forked pathway; Togami knows he could play with this, bat this mouse's corpse around the grass in his paws until he's bored. Knows likewise, the truth is mere steps to the right…but he's already begun walking, and, really, it'd be a pain to turn back.

"We did find my car, yes. Though it was less so  _car_  anymore and more so a metal skeleton sunk unto the unforgiving seaside." He folds his hands in his lap. "And Oowada Mondo's good and dead. You made sure of that."

That grasps attention, as he always so adores. " _I_  killed him? But I…I don't remember."

"Perhaps a case of dissociation from one's mind?" A soft handsome pout takes his lips. His shoulders shrug, pressing the lid atop the container on the side table. "I'll grant you this: I did dispose of him. But only because you were too busy depriving your brain of oxygen on my cellar floor."

It takes time to settle in, as Togami had accounted for. He'd placed all the details in their perfect little slots, sent it on its merry way into Naegi's buzzing cerebrum. Something satisfying grabs his ankles. He opens again his laptop, enters a search, pulls up a page. That something squeezes in the most delightful agony he's ever to feel. Leftover adrenaline coats his lungs, the same energy that bids his irises blown and pulse racing.

"Oh, and Kirigiri solved that pesky double murder case." To the beat of the other looking upward he swivels his computer to face him. The page lay open to a news article, headlined by  _Va_ _nishing act cleaned up: local business mogul shot by wayward biker._

"Oh, my God…" Naegi grasps the computer, scrolling through the article's fine print. Paragraphs detail the killing, the remains of burnt watch batteries matching Munakata's favorite Rolex being what led to the conclusion he and his bride had been incinerated. A caption beneath an evidence photo reads a quote from the one who'd taken on the case.  _'It's remarkable what can be discovered once you begin to pay more attention to what goes on around you,' says specialized crime investigator, Kirigiri Kyouko, on the event._

"But…but this says Oowada…killed himself," Naegi points out after reading further. "'Twenty-four year old Oowada Mondo of Yokohama took his own life with the same gun used to kill both Munakata and Yukizome in their home on Saturday night. The weapons were discovered in the backseat of a car he highjacked after the murder-' Wait, what? He sunk that car…right?"

"Naegi, Naegi,  _Naegi_ ," he tuts, taking the device back and glinting behind its screen. "It's time you stopped asking so many futile questions, and started understanding what I mean when I tell you that power is all that matters in life."

A slew of sickness materializes on Naegi's face, tufts of bangs flat from earlier sweating. The sun settles kindly in the bay window behind him, illuminates them in a warm honeyglow.

Togami clears his throat. "'The weapons were discovered in the backseat of a car he highjacked after the murder, along with a suicide note from the killer.'"

"Suicide note?" Naegi blinks. "But that would mean…would mean you  _planned_  on having your car stolen..?"

"Oh, of course not. Even I cannot tempt fate so flawlessly." Again, the computer closes. "I only planned on pinning the guns and the note and that horrifically bloodied sweatshirt of yours on the next unsuspecting sap who looked at me the wrong way. That infernal dumbass did all the work for me, really."

He shakes his head, digs palms into his eyes still gritty from the unplanned hours of slumber. "Hold on hold on hold on. So…Oowada stole your car, because he thought it was mine, because Enoshima is out to get me, and when he realized it was yours he stripped the parts out of it, pushed it in the ocean with the guns- and the note- inside, and..? And they think Oowada killed himself by sinking the car with him in it? But then…who'd they think they had arrested? And for what?"

"As far as the world is concerned, Oowada Mondo was a troubled youth fighting for one last ride of fame," Togami says. "As far as the Atsugi Police Department is concerned, they never took anyone by that name under their custody, and they'll be sure to put the anonymous three hundred-fifty million yen donation to good use."

His jaw gapes.

"You can't just…just pay off a police department!" demands Naegi, gripping fingers through matted hair. "What if they use that as even more evidence? What if they…what if they…why would they…?"

And that's the final crack of the whip to his spine, and fat wet sobs roll down each cheek to match the timing of his labored inhales. Before he has the chance to bury them in his sleeves, a finger tilts his chin upwards. Togami stares down at him, something entirely new rooted in the blue of his eyes. Naegi's breath hitches; the pad of a thumb reaches to wipe gentle what he has wept.

"Our names are cleared," hushes him. "Can you not see it- I float above the law of the mortal man, Naegi Makoto. I am a God. …And you're on your way."


	8. Chapter 8

Never once were things so complicated under the crushing heel of Enoshima Junko. Never once did he find himself so tangled in strings of a substance he knows not of.

Nine days pass. It takes three of those before Naegi loses the nauseous sensation, and another sixteen hours before he doesn't feel revolted by the notion of contacting the tiger hunched over his metaphorical shoulder.

When they do at last meet again, it's a nudge to his stiff literal shoulder and that stark voice telling him to snap out of whatever bullshit has absorbed in his ricecake of a brain. At the very least, Naegi is able to crack a smile as they cruise the open road toward that familiar house isolated in its own bourgeoisie corner of the city.

Then, at the ninth day and the present, once they've met each of the preceding days for a variety of excuses to do so, Togami wakes at three:sixteen in the morning.

He doesn't understand why, and it annoys him to think his body is disobedient to the natural perfection of his implemented sleeping schedule. Even his dogs have managed to stay asleep, all three turning the expanse of his bed into a minefield by their curled up forms spread throughout. He scowls. Though, he has to blame himself a bit for that as well, as his feet press flat to the carpet and hands rub over his bare face; he hasn't exactly been keeping his routine so perfect lately. Fault could fall also on the general chaos of his life as of late, to the reason behind it- the five foot five reason with gorgeous eyes and a taste for danger. Glasses push into place on his nose.

But when that five foot five little demon had first come into his life at all, he recalls in slow steps down the grand staircase, he'd been still sitting up at this same time. His life had...reached slender ennui. Stale. Monochrome. He thinks, too, that if he hadn't, he wouldn't be now either, so he supposes his boring life keeping him up to ungodly hours has been a benefit.

Or perhaps he would. That twists his frown into sly peaks at each corner.

He has to wonder about the expanse following what would have been destiny's lack of correction. Would Naegi have wept for him? Felt the wisps of sorrow ghost wet through his bones? How would the local news station commemorate him- he pictures the headline now.  _LESSONS IN FAILURE; Togami Byakuya unveils secrets to getting shived in the neck before the age of 30._

Sour tendrils drag across his tongue. Not even over his dead body would he allow himself to be thought such a busted flush.

The decision comes to him that he himself is not the fortunate one to have his existence salvaged, but the one whom he saved from prematurely thieving it. Naegi Makoto would be in a world of hellfire had he done him so wrong. Even sitting in literal hellfire, Togami would make sure of it.

But he needn't bother, because he's so smaaart and c-calculating- ... _yuck_.

But he needn't bother with anything, because he's the boss of himself and of the whole world, soon enough. For certain, he's the boss of his favorite pathetic little client, and that's plenty of spice into his life for now.

For  _now_  now, the now that concerns him the current second and those that chase, he stands in a loose button-up and white ankle socks, the space between covered in skimpy underwear of his favored variety, because he's his own boss and it's casual Friday whenever he feels like it. Or casual...casual wherever the earth happens to be in its rotation, casual AllTheDaysRunTogetherLikeWetPaint. He shifts his weight to one bent knee, tongues his dry mouth as he stares into the glow of the open refrigerator blinding his not yet adjusted sight.

Impossibly thirsty seems to coincide with a break in night's repose. The contents within are scarce; rarely can he conjure the effort to take a shopping trip, and nowadays he feels he can't trust any kind of servant on the property. Not that he'd be the perfect cook anyway, though no one would ever know so if he doesn't make any attempt at all. There's no way to be inferior at something you don't do. And for what he  _does_ do, failure is the torn off bit of the  _options_ list, shredded and burned and spat at for even daring to exist.

A half gallon of skim milk tantalizes his arid throat. He reaches to snatch it by the side, though is thrown off momentum by the unexpected lightness. Twist, flick- he peers inside the spout. Drips stare back, make him growl lowly.

The empty carton is traded for his cellphone after a quick jaunt upstairs. He'd jostled a dog in the commotion of pounding feet into his bedroom, and it follows him in his even pace about the kitchen now, whines and presses muzzle to palm. Togami indulges him idly with his free fingers, busied hand still holding his phone to his face.

 _"H...hello?"_ The other end crackles with sleep.  _"Togami..? Are you okay?"_

"No," he answers back.

He hears the shift of sheets as though Naegi's pushing to sit himself up, to jump out of bed at the drop of a hat should he be needed in immediacy. Togami likes that.

_"What's wrong? Are you hurt, did-did something happen?"_

Togami likes that, too, just adores the concern Naegi harbors for him. It reads nearly the connection of two lifelong friends, or  _more_ , not that he'd enjoy anything more. But Naegi treats him as if they've known each other a decade, rather than two weeks. Two deliciously horrific weeks, he thinks. And he'd care for a thousand more. "I'm out of milk."

Fireflies chirp in place of an answer. Those sheets shift another time, and even through the phone his sigh's languor is palpable.  _"Togami...it's three in the morning."_

"Three:twenty-eight," he corrects. "And there's a twenty-four hour convenience store in Tokyo, so you need not worry about what time it is."

A certain exasperation carries the words,  _"You're going to drive twenty minutes to my house, just to drive all the way back another forty minutes to Tokyo, to buy milk?"_

Where no response comes (as there is none necessary, he's just so perfectly summarized the intentions), another sigh prisons acumen.  _"Alright, I'll wait outside."_

The call clicks to an end, phone dropping to a countertop. Within all the twenty here forty there, Naegi hadn't mentioned the thirty he spends first primping himself, hair and teeth and eyes and dapper fresh-ironed Armani. Casual Doesn'tMatterEveryday'sTheSame burns down with his perfectly done contour.

He moves to select keys from the drawer of his foyer's tall hutch, pauses a moment in gentle contemplation. The dog at his heels yaps once. He concludes to stroke the feeling of dauntlessness digging nails unto his skin as of late, snatches up one ring and takes for the back exit. " _Myesto,_ Chopin," is his last command, stopping the trail of clicking nails behind him and locking the door firmly after.

Togami doesn't know how Naegi's head works, what he anticipates and does not. By the look on his face when he pulls up to the curb outside that shitty apartment, he guesses his shocked little client hadn't expected to be picked up on a sleek and sexy big-wheeled Harley cruiser, already a model of the year following.

"Oh...wow." Finally that leather jacket he loves to don and does so now has a proper atmosphere. "...No helmets?"

"I'm a good driver," he assures, revving the bike's handles. Naegi does not appear convinced.

Regardless there's a step forward, hands leaving coat pockets to hold them in unknowing beyond him. "Uh...do I...just-?"

"You've seen films, have you not?" It's almost a scoff. "Sit. Arms around my waist. And not a fraction lower, are we clear?"

Hesitant, he nods into a slow release of breath.

They tear off in a gust of smog, swerving down three intersections to meet the bay bridge. Iridescence lines the sides as they fly up the incline. Those arms tighten around him a bit. Wind bites against his satisfaction.

The night, now past four, is cool and forgiving. Summertime along the country's eastern border is a mess of sweat and sin and slaughter. Now, just as in his hours of leaving behind him tears of convertible tire tracks, breeze laps along freed skin. His lips chap in the rush. Ten minutes past the bridge, they stop at a red light just beside an all-night grocery store. He keeps driving.

Life is a blur on either side of them. Speed's measurement requires a fixed point of comparison; he thinks he'd sooner let mortality take him than ever wish to be stilled now. But a skip and a length, a lift of tire just  _so_ off the pavement (and again, those arms form a vise around his ribs) and the meter dips below 80 for the first time the whole trip. Urban blocks pave the way before them, street lamps flickering and, in this particular city corner, a dozen shop windows all lit up in welcoming.

The feel of it reminds Naegi close of home, other than a single warm trait. He squints above, beyond the neon signs and flashing, and Togami swears he feels his heart beat faster against his back.

"Stars," he says once the kickstand's beneath them. His halfwitted comment is outwardly ignored, though Togami bids himself a personal laud for his, yet another time intellect as spectacular as the sights above.

The heavy  _clunk_  of each boot greets the sidewalk just outside their destination. Over the phone he had not mentioned anything about it being a liquor store, but he'd say  _convenience store_  and, hell, this is all sorts of convenient to him. And they probably have milk.

Behind him, Naegi stumbles against his lift off. The head-boggling pace had rendered him a fawn learning steps, close to dropping himself down before he's caught by each a hand, and he laughs at his own idiocy. Togami anchors him upward until the dizzy spell fades, until it settles into his mind that-  _ew,_ he's touching someone else, even though this someone had just latched onto him for forty kilometers, but touching people lesser than him is disgust-inducing, which means touching anyone in the world is disgust-inducing. So he lets go, wipes palms against his pockets while Naegi catches himself in pleading solidity, head dipped and hair a nest of heedless tufts.

"Okay, I'm good," he says between each curve to his simper. "Thanks."

Togami sighs petty, keeps his arms folded as he leads the way into the store. Instantly the conditioned air greets them, nipping against already wind-chapped faces. A bell chimes above them. The on-duty worker, a long haired thin armed teenage boy, slumps bored against the counter.

Shelves line all around them, bottom to top racks of booze and the stench of it potent. Florescent lights flicker. Naegi scans over a variety of fun-flavored vodkas on a shelf to his eye-level. Cotton-candy Grey Goose finds its way into his hands for closer inspection.

"Do you want that?" nearly jolts the bottle from his grasp. Togami's five inches to his peripheral, suddenly, empty handed and blank stared.

"No, it's fine." He sets it back aside the birthday cake in a bottle. "Aren't you getting milk?"

Blue eyes find thin scrutiny. "They don't have the brand I like," is his dismissal, looking along the same row of vodkas. His fingers tempt the neck of one, then all at once leave to fall at his side.

"Let's go."

They've spent mere minutes inside. Lights flicker more. Naegi cocks his head. "What? Where?"

" _U_ _n endroit amusant."_  That bell above them chimes again with his shove through the exit, Naegi following behind while attempting to piece together what's been said to him. He has trouble enough understanding Togami when he speaks Japanese.

Their  _somewhere fun_ is a brisk walk two blocks down. Leather pulls tighter about his chest.

Bright neon shouts  _LITTLE RENO_ back at them as they mount the single stair up to the door. As he does with any entrance, Togami floats through as if the place is under his own authority, pushing his way past the surprisingly busy barroom to take a seat at a stool. The empty one beside him is claimed without word, more neon glaring back through the shining hazel of Naegi's amazed eyes. Togami ponders vaguely if he's ever been in a bar before; he figured, if any, he'd feel more at home in a shabby place like this one. He's halfway certain it's a front for a pot distributor, too, but says null of it.

A young woman in a black polo waits on his snapping fingertips. "Bourbon, old fashioned. And a shot of sake." He gestures to his company, who burns red under the waiting stare of the stranger on the bar's other side, pen stuck through a thick brunette bun and nails a loud blue.

"Uh- Sex on the Beach," he stutters out over the latent pounding music, "But-But with lemon instead of orange? If that's okay..?"

Evidently it is, as she sweeps off without complaint, running a hand down a line of open bottles reflected back in the mirror behind them. Togami snorts a derisive note. "Sex on the Beach." The bartender places his shot down before him, and he wraps fingertips around the small frosted glass. "You really are just an exemplary fag, aren't you."

Naegi turns to peer at his profile, tilted back with the burn of alcohol down his throat and highlighted in flashing illumination. His fingers tap against the bar, lost in the thought of returning a comment, but gets wrapped in watching the performance down the line; another petite ponytailed woman juggles two bottles of Smirnoff, tossing and catching them by the necks while a bushel of drunks  _ooh_ and  _aah._ The song switches to a different thump of bass. Naegi finds himself humming it.

His attention is captured by two soft clinks below. Their drinks are set and tender rushing off in all the same second, the bustle around never once halting despite the hour of the night. He notices a majority are foreigners, and pins this as a popular spot for the American tourists always hopping about the capital. He guesses, too, that it's why he doesn't understand a single lyric of what the music above him is telling. Sweet fruity tang meets his lips. Beside him, Togami sneers at the same people, invading his space as they do with everything else.

He at last lets his bias drop in favor of mimicking Naegi's new line of sight, one toward a waitress emerging from a swinging back door with a platter balanced on an arm. She squeezes past them to wind through the maze of tables. Togami wonders who the hell orders a full sundae and a Sangria at four in the morning, but can't be bothered to learn the  _who_  behind it, more concerned with the  _how_ after taking in Naegi's horribly concealed excitement upon seeing it.

"You," Togami snaps as the same waitress flounces back by them a minute later. She pauses, blinks, slaps her happy-go-lucky expression back into place to greet him. "One of those for over here, too."

"Oh no, Togami, it's okay-"

"Mhm!" passes over the bass, already clicking the pen stolen from her hair and pressing it to a paper pad from her apron pocket. "Would you like to try our flavor of the month, Margarita ice cream, with salted lime and tequila?"

This, he can most certainly fuck with; Togami looks to the other, face frozen in attempted refusal still. The waitress takes his glance again, with a nod this time and a further list off of various toppings. The pen scribbles at the pace of his clipping tongue, and she tucks it back into her bun with a bow forward before a quick exit.

He watches Naegi twirl the umbrella in his cutesy drink. Then his shoulders press forward with a sob that stops his chest a moment, before he realizes Naegi's just coughed up a laugh rather than a bawl. "Who the hell orders ice cream at four in the morning?"

"You do," Togami tells him, hides his bemusement behind the rim of his bourbon.  _Snorts when he laughs hard enough_ goes onto the list.

The atmosphere never once lags. Entertainment is the music, the lights, the series of televisions all blaring sports in other timezones. And the women behind the bar- that same one with the scrunchie holding back her long cord of black hair, she pours out two drinks at a time, mixes, wiggles, shakes. The men around her holler cheers to the tune of her swaying hips. Togami's eyes follow the ice clinking through Naegi's drink, watches the pink liquid drain to the middle of the heavy glass as its straw is leant over and sucked at.

Along the inner lip of the bar, soft lights switch in gradual fades between blue, orange, green, red. It colors his face in a darkly handsome way, Togami thinks, still observing him. He crunches a piece of ice in his molars, mouth vibrating against the harmony around them.

It wedges into his pleasantry. "Do you even realize what this song is about?"

That catches him off guard, lids together lids apart a few times whilst thought drowns him. "Uh," he leans into another sip, "Not really. It's catchy though."

Togami smirks as he enlightens, "The same as that drink you ordered."

That drink he ordered stops its slow desolation, and he smacks his lips together several quiet times. Between them, which halts his response, the waitress sets a silver dish, piled in so much whipped cream and caramel the lime tints of ice cream at the base are hardly visible. Two cherries rest at the top, two spoons clattering to each side. Togami glares at the utensil as though it has committed a personal crime against him. His knuckles nudge the dish out of his area, directly in front of Naegi who already has his spoon waiting to delve into the monster of a dessert.

Ice clicks to his glass as he sips, looks over a shoulder with absent half moons. This isn't his normal scene, far from his classy forte for a barroom. What had he been doing in the first place? A woman to his right lifts her top and flashes the roaring crowd beside her. Oh, right. Buying milk.

"So," Naegi says a hot minute later. His tongue dissolves a mouthful of cream. Togami finds himself staring at the bit on his lip, finds this room is too warm and too flustering. "This song. It's about...sex?"

A loose nod. The singer shrieks through another chorus. "Cake by the ocean, licking frosting from your hand," he reiterates into their natural vernacular. "It's a poorly veiled metaphor for taking a woman to the beach all for a  _quickie_." Those eyes of his roll, bringing his beverage up just below his mouth that still waves with speech. "Music these days is a mockery. All of these callow artists use up their full mental capacity searching for a thousand different ways to say 'fuck me, kiss me, take me home' _._ "

Despite the scorching critique, the song continues its dull booming unscathed. Condensation flutters with the slow circulation of his glass in his hand, still the clinks and mixing of liquors. Then it is that flustering warmth again, so near to him and so pulsing. When he ventures a look up from the glass, Naegi has crossed every boundary, touch fallen to his thigh and sweet hot breath on his face. Togami pulls back on instinct.

"...What are you doing?"

Reverie shattered, outer coating cracked to pieces. His mouth closes from the small gape it had taken on to go to a worried plateau. "You...You said, 'kiss me', didn't you?"

A silent overture ties them, silences the catastrophe of all that is the background, and they're sitting on two stools in a crowded little bar on the skirts of Tokyo at four AM, drinking and gaggling over a ten verse sex joke, ice cream and cherries and bottle juggling, a shot of sake and an empty milk carton, and Togami swallows so tight against his buttoned collar it feels a second skin before he says, "No," and leans forward with a hand through the back of the other's hair to finish what he started.

To the list, he adds  _Naegi's mouth tastes like salted lime and tequila,_ but he supposes that's incidental.

The overture ends in a roar of civilians. Togami's eyes flutter open to catch a far plasma screen blaring a winning basket scored in overtime. Jostled by the personified intoxication behind him, Naegi falls forward just enough to be pressed against his chest, face blazing hot by every definition. He scrambles off as though pushed into glass shards, which Togami would find the care to resent if his blood weren't .050 and his slacks weren't so suddenly a size too taut. Instead he stands, flips his wallet open and thumbs through the bills enough times to realize counting is for idiots and leaves a mess of them on the bar. "Let's go."

"Wha-Huh?" trails him through the crowd. Naegi's legs wobble as though he'd just again hopped off the motorcycle. The step outside is invisible to them both, though Togami has the control better not to fall forward as far as the one behind him, face meeting his shoulder as they enter the invigorating outdoors. "Where are we going  _now?"_

Hands fish through Togami's pockets, one returning at last with a keyring hooked over one knuckle. "To get you a refill on that drink."

Neon glows against Naegi's skin as he stands in eyebrow-knitting thought, and his head catches up to reality in time to rush the blood back to his face.

His steps after the other clack at an impressive pace.


	9. Chapter 9

A tongue in his mouth wakes him. Ludwig van Beethoven is a surprisingly messy kisser.

Togami blinks against the morning light, elbows the dog away from his face and swipes his sleeve across the drool coating it. Or, rather, his bare forearm where he'd expect to find fabric. That ignites him in incertitude. Normally he does not find himself asleep in total nude, and equally as regular there isn't another body ragdolled over his chest, the same level of naked and lost in sleep.

And, dear  _god,_ are they sticky.

Into his palms, he groans. He knows what's occurred here at this white-chalked crime scene, and for the first time he has no working alibi. It isn't even able to be blamed on being blackout drunk, as is his favorite excuse- last night had just barely bordered on  _tipsy_. Fucking Naegi had been a sober, perhaps not quite stable, decision.

The fuckee shifts, one arm folded under his chin to a stretch of body diagonally across the Cali king. Knees downward, his legs are trapped under the weight of another dog, who lifts his head and stares toward them once the mass beneath him begins to stir. Naegi groans lowly, too, awake several long seconds before his eyes at last open. They widen in blinks, then, taking in the image before him with a glow to his cheekbones. Fists move in a long stretch of muscle. Naegi yawns, glances around the room a moment, and laughs one single chime.

"Guess we, uh, had some fun last night."

Between two fingers, Togami pinches his nose's bridge. "Yes," grits past his teeth, "guess so."

Another yawn, and he's left to struggle in claiming his legs back, finds his footing in a minor stumble into the tall dresser aside him. Tchaikovsky hops down off the bed, nudges his nose against the door and squeezes out into the hall.

Within the bounds still of the master bedroom, Togami watches Naegi collect his clothing strewn over the floor. The hem of his jeans meets his fingertips; sand makes a mess of the floor when he shakes them out, and he flushes fresh at the reminder. Despite it- he digs through the front pocket and, in a huff of relief, finds his phone inside.

Togami takes to dropping his thumping head back to the pillow. Forearms fold over his face, lifting only once the other fills the room with the syrup of his speech.

"Oh man…" His thumb glides down a mess of notifications. "Seven missed calls from Kirigiri."

The comforter tightens against his legs as Naegi sits on the edge once he's stuck legs through boxers, anxiety evident on his blanched expression. Bile threatens his throat as he redials her with hands trembling.

For his life Togami cannot fathom the nerves. Their last… _wrongdoing_  had been settled for over a week already, every piece of evidence in perfect place to draw the final conclusion and close the case. There was nothing else to dig up, no one new to suspect. Naegi's guilt would get him into real trouble someday, and far be it from himself to coddle the emotion out- he'll have to learn from experience he thinks, tugging the blanket higher above his navel and tuning into the conversation beside him once it takes shape.

"Hi, Kyouko," leaves him in broken syllables. "Sorry, I didn't- What? Airport?" Interest is caught from the both of them. Naegi lifts both brows. The novas beneath them push convex. "She  _died?!_  Wha..!"

To the eavesdropper's loathing, he jumps up to carry the call into the hallway, last words fading muted behind, "What do you mean, she just exploded somehow?!"

A sigh folds in on him. He's… _tired_ , in the sense of sleep and of otherwise. Tired from relationships, feelings, the drama of  _caring_ , not that he does so very frequently. He cares about himself and about his business, and most prominently about treating every obstacle with the premonition of coming out on top.

Cares about looking so hot the spotlight cracks above him, too, gliding smoothly into standing. A pair of slim-fitting slacks grace his calves, thighs. He remembers in the haze of yesternight, as he's buttoning his top to the chin, their  _escapades_  on the shore had ended with a half-nude ride back here to go at it a second lustful desperate time. He thinks his suit jacket is still stuffed in the under-seat storage of his motorcycle. He thinks Naegi's tee shirt washed out to sea.

"That was Kirigiri," is announced needlessly once he returns, phone in one hand and the other clutching the opposite inner elbow. "…She has to fly into Hokkaido for her assistant's funeral. Her family all lives up there, or something... But she's going to be out of town for, like, a week."

He stands, smoothing his collar down to the hem. "Excellent," is all he has to say, disregarding the macabre announcement for the fortune in his mind. "There will be no interruptions once Enoshima Junko turns up dead tomorrow morning, then."

Very nearly does he swear he can hear the panicked thrum to Naegi's heart when he says, "What?!" and drops his mouth into a circle with eyes to match.

The door to his closet slides open, flicking on the bulb inside tandem with his scanning through the rows of hung jackets. "I think it's time you paid a visit to your former ringleader, don't you agree?"

"Oh," and his only requirement, "...Can I shower first?"

Togami shoots a frown over a shoulder, selects a gray jacket to match his pants and hangs it over a bent forearm. "Down the hall to the left."

While his guest takes to that path, he makes for his own washroom in the room's opposite corner. He undresses, annoyed with himself for being so wrapped up within thought to have done so in the first place. Naegi Makoto is impeding his ability to remember hygiene. Naegi Makoto is slowly but surely taking over every inch of his mind, surely but slowly ruining his entire life. And, twisting the knob to let the hot streaks of water tame his shoulders, he thinks he could use a little bit of ruining.

Not once did he expect... _this!_ from all of its events preceding. The map in his head gets an attempted retrace of steps, but still, he cannot configure how leaving his window open at three AM on a warm summer night had led to him buying ice cream for an assassin and fucking him ten minutes later. How not getting to bed at a reasonable hour on a warm summer night meant he'd have a naked man in his bed and sand in all the wrong places. He scrubs his limbs furiously. There is no connection, he at last settles, no correlation between the stages of his life this past month, between himself and that naked man down the hall. And there's no relation between his walk down the hall to place fresh folded clothing outside the bathroom door and the humming he hears through it. With a subtle flash of mirthful exasperation, he recognizes the melody from a freaky little barroom packed with tourists and neon lights.

Kibble clacks into three porcelain bowls. In the kitchen, Togami shoves his way past the gnashing snarling teeth to drop the bag of dog chow back into its high cabinet. Analog hands beside it tell him it's nearing one in the afternoon, and having slept so long suits him sourly. The empty milk carton on the counter doesn't mend him any, either. Again the memory of last night surfaces, and he pinches his eyes to the ceiling with a low noise of misery.

There's no milk, but a tumbler of scotch makes a nice substitute. And there aren't any rules against trading in cereal for a long treasurer black.

He's seated at the head of the cherry oak dining table in the next room over when motion descends the stairs. Naegi leans on a nearby wall with full attention on the phone in his hands, handsomely groomed washed fluffed. To Togami's pleasure, he'd dressed himself in the outfit left outside the door; fine cotton button down with sleeves pushed to the elbows, gray vest over and necktie beneath. Still he dons the same dark jeans from last night, though he supposes it's for the better, considering his leg length practically doubles the other's. Regardless, Naegi looks the part of a gorgeous trophy husband, a beautiful little lap warmer, Togami thinks, watching his trek into the kitchen. He reemerges a minute later, fruitless besides the duo of dogs that trail his heels as though they're denim-clad top sirloin.

Arms go akimbo. "No coffee?"

"Chivas Regal," he says in its place, raising the glass toward him.

"You drink too much." The corner of his mouth falls to a pout, yet still he advances, wolfpack following close behind. He sits at the seat second to Togami, tapping fingers to the table rather than accepting the beverage. His remark receives no counter.

Nails clack into the room after a moment in silence. The third dog sniffs the air, sneezes boldly, and wags himself in Naegi's direction to receive immediate pats along his neck. Togami narrows a glare at the betrayal.

"So...about what you mentioned earlier," starts Naegi, hands occupied splitting pets between each canine. "You want to kill Enoshima... _today?_ "

A charming shrug is offered. "We've certainly been planning it long enough. So long as you give me the correct location this time, there should be no issues."

Naegi seems to shy away upon the mention of the deed, though does not address it. "Maybe we should wait-"

Smoke fades out with his disgusted scoff. " _Don't_ tell me you still harbor affection toward Stiletto Sagawa. You've got everything you could ever need working for me, Naegi Makoto. Do you not appreciate all that I have given you? Would you rather swear your allegiance back to her?"

The last thing Togami hopes for is such strong hesitance. He gestures vehemently about him. " _Well?"_

"No," he says to quell the oncoming fire. "I mean- I mean  _yes,_ I appreciate you, and  _no,_ I don't...I don't wanna go back."

"Excellent choice." All at once he rises, the unfold of legs and drop of cigarette between shards of crushed ice, and calls him forward with a flick to the wrist. "Let us go, then."

"Now?" courses frantic through the halls they travel next, up the stairs, in his office. It's all too similar a scene. That same grandfather clock is shoved from its place, that same safe hatch lifted and rummaged within. He retracts a duo of revolvers, scrutinizes them a moment. Naegi steps forward gingerly at his beckon; upon further instruction he lifts a foot and places it to the seat of a brewster chair beside him. Togami lines the gun up to the length of his boot, then sets them both back into the hole in the wall. Next is a pair of machine pistols, which match the size to be concealed beautifully within the black martens and are deemed the victor. They slip each into a boot. With one finger, Togami presses a magazine cartridge into the pocket of his vest.

Naegi shivers.

The ride bears  _silence,_ other than the occasional meek direction from the passenger side that each time Togami is tentative in following. But they reach the border of Yokohama shortly, and a mere handful of miles further are promised. He finds it melancholic almost, to be so near their goal. Yet all the same the boundless gratification of blowing the head off an adversary makes his fingers quake in delight around the steering wheel of his Mercedes. Half consciously, he grates his foot harder into the gas pedal.

"Right here," causes him to slam the opposite pedal. His head rams forward, but he wastes no time before straightening him to stare at the landscape unfolded around them.

A mansion fit for God sits at the top of a paved incline driveway. Pristine architecture towers over him in his little bitty car, thriving white walls three stories skyward and Roman-style columns supporting at either end of a long set of flat porch steps. Mustering the vigor behind the stun, Togami drives them the few meters up the hill before reaching gold rimmed gates. There's a speaker system implemented beside them, which Naegi  _um's_ timid into as if he were placing a drive-thru order. "N-Naegi Makoto...here to see Enoshima...sama. I have a guest."

A pause follows, then a skull-shattering buzz as the gates creek open and settle at either side. They exchange a long glance to one another, and Togami presses onward.

In the middle of the walkway outside the house, the  _castle,_ which they've now a closer view of, ripples fade over the surface of a koi pond. The fountain above it stands proudly, marble sculpted into a dual-tone bear in a seashell bikini rushing water softly from the mouth. Togami finds it horribly tacky, an offense that he must park aside the gaudy thing. He moves to tear his almighty gaze off of it, turns his head the complete opposite direction and finds his pathway obscured by the faintest touch of magic. Centimeters part their lips next, until it is a distance of zero splitting them and Naegi's mouth doesn't taste like lime anymore, but the flickering tips of fire in a hearth, yet all the same the dripping sugarcane it melts. He feels the hand he rests on the center console have touch dropped atop it.

Naegi pulls back in a soft hush, meets clouds for eyes in half lost shut.

Togami stares, stares, stares, emotion gone from his expression though bursting in lush gardens within. He again sits forward to the windshield, shoulders stiff, heart on a sleeve.

"...Don't fuck up."

Those long flat steps carry them up to foreboding. Naegi, having taken the role of leader just this once, reaches out for the handle, but startles back when they're dragged inward by another force. He blinks around, steels himself in a breath and marches inside with Togami close behind. The heavy doors sing a booming echo in closure. The attendant responsible behind it catches up to them as a blockade down their path through the vast foyer.

"Eno-Enoshima-sama is glad to see you return," she says to them, a short and full-figured woman of assumed equal age. Her dark hair falls in choppy lengths around her shoulders, unevenly settling back across her forehead once she lifts from the bow of greeting. "And she'll be very happy to see wh-what you've brought with you."

Togami does not take so kindly to being referred to as a  _what,_ but forces his jaw wired. Naegi acknowledges her vaguely, and she bids them to follow the gentle tiptoe of her trail.

The foyer expands to a hall of marble and fine porcelain. The tiles reflect their steps back upwards. More podiums line along the clean white walls, leaves crawling up to their tops. It's nothing Togami isn't used to, just  _more_ , and that fills him with a renewed sense of heat all through him. His fists clench at either hip.

Along their walk, one that seems just  _endless,_ the clean white of the walls on either side play background to dozens of monstrous photographs, each bordered by gold frames. Every other one is a young man or woman, posed in a debatably provocative manner and dressed to the nines. The ones between each random muse- it's the same single woman, one he recognizes from hours of extensive late night Googling to compile her stats into her own personal folder on his desktop. Though, that searching hadn't dug up anything on a drug ring, just many successful years of modeling along with sample images. Some of those very same pictures hang here, bikinis and miniskirts and false lashes long as his dick taunting him behind each frame.

"Right through here," the woman leading them says in poorly-placed ecstasy. Togami had nearly forgotten her presence at all, until she's turned, face flush and grinning lips coated in saliva. He hasn't the time to sneer at the abhorrence, for she's already shoved a palm to the elaborate double doors in front of them. Cool whiteness stiffens them. Their guide sprints forward into it, dropping to her knees and twinning hands together beneath her chin.

"Naegi's here, Enoshima Heika!" she announces as they step into the room on either side of her. It's a large square layout, the same reds and whites and golds as the halls leading up to it. A thin duo of stairs form a square themselves, too, set in the room's dead center to lift upon them a fine throne of deep scarlet cushioning gilded down the arms and feet. The one atop it straightens Togami's back instinctively, chin lifting in his full imperial stance.

Her legs rest crossed, hands lain to the ends of each chair arm. Silk weaves the treacherously tiny dress, a pale pink color to the lowcut collar leaving little room for imagination. His eyes continue their trail upward, to the gold choker around her throat, to the gyaru makeup caked on her face, to each diamond-studded clip parting two thick tails of bubblegum curls high on either side of her head.

She's absolutely revolting.

"Thanksies, Mikan!" Her teeth gleam an unnatural white between the stretch of ruby lips. "Kindly get the fuck out of here now, sweetheart! Naegi-chan and I have  _looots_ to talk about."

The attendant stands and shuffles out again, tears gushing past her strawberry smile until she's gone, door meeting frame in a generous  _slam._

That leaves them there, a trio basking in the billowing echo. Togami poses himself a deer frozen on the sidelines of the action in the works.

From her queenly perch, Enoshima fans her hands a moment, staring at the immaculate scarlet lengths of her nails before curling a fist and resting her cheek upon it. One leg falls out of its cross, planting a white pump flat to the ground and exposing a  _V_ of panties betwixt her now opened thighs. And she grins.

"Makokoro," she purrs, and he flinches back hard. "Come here, baby. Sit with Momma."

Pitiful steps carry him toward her sans complaint. Togami bites back his throbbing aversion as he watches him climb into her lap and have a fat wet kiss planted on his mouth.

"Where on  _earth_  have you been, angel?!" A finger outstretches to tap his nose. "You had me just worried sick! Don't you know you have a curfew?"

His face glows a humiliated pink. "I-I'm sorry, I know it's been a while, but I...I, um..." The cogs through his head swivel visibly, churning through what Togami hopes is their set plan of action. He sighs, hands fidgeting in his lap. "...I failed you."

Her head tilts in theatrical question. "Failed me? My, whatever do you mean, dearest? Could it possibly have to do with  _that,"_ she halts to point harshly at the guest in the corner, who takes more chagrin at the dehumanizing, "standing over there? Could it, could it?!"

Another tremble rolls through his lips. "It...could, yeah. Um-" He looks over a shoulder, though is not met with a joined stare; the other two face off in a pin ball match of eyes on eyes, blues on blues. Naegi quiets himself, lost for what to further.

At last, she concedes, breaks herself off into a wicked cackle behind fingertips. Attention pulses back to the sweet little doll in her lap, whom she bounces on a knee and covers neck to forehead in lipstick marks.

"You even got all dressed up to come see me!" she gawks, admiring the tie with a knuckle curled through the loop. She tugs it hard forward, and he gags. "How  _sweet_."

Naegi coughs in a loss for oxygen, wrests her hand off with his own. She laughs wildly, grasping his whole body in a hug that smushes his face to her chest, then in one motion shoves his stomach down against her thighs.

" _Bad_ boy!" she bites against the first smack of palm to his ass. "It's been  _weeks-_ weeks, Makoto! If you think for one single itty bitty teeny weeny second that you're going to get away with misbehaving like this, you've got anotha thang comin'!"

All the while she lectures, her hand continues its assault. Cheekbones flush, he winces at each spank. Togami marinates in the sheer discomfort of watching the scene play out. His mouth purses in a sneer of disgust, dropping next at the subtle sight dancing before him. Naegi's arm dangles loosely betwixt her knees. It moves, cautious, slow, slow, slow, to tease the rim of his boot on the same side's ankle. Fingers push inside as delicate as they can whilst his leg twitches with the force of each punishing slap. His heart pulsates in his throat as he watches Naegi retrieve the first gun, knuckles wrapping white around it and lifting in one quick sweep-

"Aw, you silly little boy!"

-which she catches in a death grip of her fingers around his wrist.

Naegi's breath hitches in an audible echo. He wiggles the fingers of the limb she grasps in such a twist of death, nails knives into his skin. The gun struggles within his restrained hold.

She smiles sweetly at it, too many teeth for her mouth and lipstick smeared at each corner. Her free hand lifts, a fairy floating upon air currents, and yanks the clip from her left ponytail. The silver gemstone heart runs across his palm in one quick strike. Immediately his recoil follows, weapon dropped neatly into her hand. She presses the clip back into place on its tie, serrated edge dripping scarlet.

At the stomp of two heels Naegi lay at, clutching the gush of blood from his palm in a tumble of grit-teeth groans. Vitality seems to restore within him, Togami notes from the side where he perches in bold stillness, legs bending beneath him as though to rise. He falls again with a hard pistol-whip to the cheek.

Enoshima seems to pause the most subtle bit at his pained hiss. She blink-blinks those thick black lashes, and Togami swears they shine in the overhead lighting. Then she steals a grin from a wolf, and drops heavy atop his waist, continuing the assault with more bare-handed slaps to either side of his face.

"You're-"  _slap_ "so"  _smack_ "silly! You're so so so  _silly!"_  Her fists grip his vest front and drag him to resting upon shoulder blades. "Don't you know guns hurt people, Makoto baby? Betcha didn't though, 'cause you couldn't even kill that scrawny blonde twink over there with all odds against him! You couldn't kill  _anyone!_ You're  _pathetic pathetic pathetic!"_

His face stings a glaring red of handprints. He hasn't the time to retort her claims- rather only to accept the press of her mouth tight to his, turn his lungs aching with oxygen-deprivation for one long heist of romance. Each leg flails wild beneath her weight. In that, their silent savior perceives a route forward.

He steadies himself, watching closely the move of his ankles whipping. With each, his boot loosens, loosens, and Togami pounces forward.

Lips pucker, press, part. Enoshima kisses him with all the fervency of a cat in heat. Only does she pull off once she's left his lips bruised, left his heart hammering and eyes glistening. She pulls off, studies him in coyness with a knuckle stroking his jawline. He's dropped abruptly in a thud to the floor below, bones hitting in a loud melody with the single  _click_  that had alerted her to to sit a bolt and face it.

A steel glare fixes on her behind the barrel of the second gun. His voice rings more lethal than the weapon's capacity, in a single command that draws shiver through the third. "Off."

Enoshima peers at him stunned a moment.

Then, she smirks.

To either side of herself, she spreads her arms in an offering. Beguiled into rage by her cockiness, by her laughs that drop an octave from her preppy schoolgirl tone, Togami bristles, but does not hesitate. His index slams against the trigger.

And her smile widens.

The pistol sits at the end of his extended arm, aimed downward at her, finger clamped still around the trigger with absolutely zero results. Togami gawks.

" _Naegi!"_ reverberates against every brick. "You are the most genuine fucking  _imbecile_ I have ever met." His arms swings backward in a violent smash of the empty gun to the space behind him. It collides with a glass picture frame on the wall, which shatters and falls in a cacophony to the floor.

"You gave me the  _wrong. fucking. gun!"_

Where he lay pale in the sickness of his hollers, the one seated atop him continues her fit of giggles. Her own weapon raises. "No he didn't!"

Togami stands dazed a moment, chest heaving with the effort of his rancor. No merit finds his curious glance toward Naegi's worried look in pure, pure sorrow, then back to that of his assailant. She waggles the pistol, her delicious prize.

"You didn't think Mako-chan would really betray m-"

He betrays her soliloquy in a crack of palm over her cheek. This time, the stun isn't for drama. She looks downward to him, and in mere seconds is forced to look  _upward_  in a full tackle of her body into the floor behind her.

"You're a liar!" Naegi demands, seated on her stomach as she had him just moments prior. In a wicked sense of déjà vu, slaps rain over her face in time to his words, streaks of blood marring her from his laceration. "You lied to me, you lied to me! You promised to protect me-" His hand reaches to grip her wrist and snatch wickedly the gun from her. Shock prevents her resistance.

Naegi stands above her, muscles all quaking. His foot presses to her chest, and at last she begins to struggle, clawing his calf in a futile rage that comes much too late. He glares down at her pitiful final thrashes, his hands shaking in the fury of nerves. The gun lifts. "And you lied." Trigger pulled, hook line and sinker.

A mess of bullets render her stilled, the force of the firing drawing his petite frame backwards. Blood soaks through the light pink of her dress, splashes up against his pants and erupts from her in coughs. The muzzle smokes languidly in time to his panting breaths once the assault ceases.

Enoshima Junko lay slain at his feet. Knees buckle in a slow one, two, and he drops to them, a mess on the inside and out.

There isn't time for mourning, nor regain of strength; Togami's on him in a flash, and he goes rigid in white hot fear despite all he's just done. But the ambush is not of attack, instead of liberation in his quick wrap of an arm around his middle to yank him upward. "Let's move."

Togami dashes to the double doors, banging already clamoring from their opposite side. He shoves them apart. The woman before opens her mouth to beg of the commotion, and she receives the same treatment as the doors, leaving her tumbling into a short podium sporting a potted plant. Soil and leaves fly about her form, fallen to the floor with legs flailed open. Togami's already leapt down the porch stairs by the time she has the will to cry out.

Neither care for the heavy jostle. Naegi's tossed like a rolled up bedspread into the passenger side, Togami crawling the same way through to slam the door aside him. He floors the Mercedes into reverse, ramming into the fountain behind them in his mad frenzy to tear from the driveway. It cracks at the base and tumbles forward into the shallow water before it. Nothing but the dust of exhaust is left to be accounted for.

A puff of tousled brunette pokes upward. Naegi sits straight ahead, still grappling to regain his breath.

Knuckles white around the wheel, Togami refuses speech, a thousand and one feelings all battling against one another in the bounds of his skull. He decides not to focus on a single thing other than the open road he revs ninety down.

Then: "...Togami?"

His molars do not leave their stressed clench. "What."

Naegi's shoulders never once relax. Very nearly does he beg again the question, as his reciprocation takes a near minute to arrive. "...I think I'm gonna throw up."

That stressed clench falls closer, tighter. The car barrels another two miles in a blink, opens around them to normal civilization.

"Shut up, Makoto."


	10. Chapter 10

" _It all depends. When do you want to die? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow?"_

_"How about tonight, bitch?"_

Togami could think of a kilometer's worth of better ways to spend two hours.

"I can't believe you've never seen Kill Bill," says the one sat beside him, wide greens focused with intent on the gleaming plasma screen. Bits of shrimp pass down his throat, the rest of the soba dish in a take-out container in his lap.

Togami runs the tongs of a fork through his own meal, scorn melting from his lids at the sword slashing and cheap gore. "Yes. Simply unbelievable."

Quiet surrounds him for lack of wishing speech to his lips. Sunlight passes down outside the bay window behind the second empty couch to the left. He doesn't know what time it's nearing, doesn't know if it's lunch or dinner- or perhaps breakfast, though he'd be hard pressed to admit to the late afternoon phone call from his subordinate being what woke him.

He'd been hesitant to answer it regardless, as he has been of late when the ID across his phone reads the name of the one sitting next to him now, lips to the straw of a strawberry milkshake and fingernails dotted each in black polish. Thoughts of Naegi had been disturbing his wellbeing ever since they'd first met. Now the haunting does not leave him until his body cannot handle the sour vinegar of consciousness any longer. He watches him set the drink back to the coffee table, dripping against the courtesy of a coaster beneath it. His newly freed hand flexes uncomfortably; condensation soaks the bandage wrapped from knuckles to vanished past his jacket's leather sleeve hem. Togami wonders if he's changed the dressing at all in the past six days, but bothers not with it.

"This movie is great," says Naegi, nodding his approval toward the screen flashing a gruesome death of a blade to the heart. "It's an American film, but a lot of it takes place here, which is cool. Asian people have the best action movies." He bites the head off another shrimp. "And The Bride- that's the blonde lady -she's really what inspired me to be an...an assassin, too."

"A B-rate slasher flick is what started you down the road to destruction?" Togami scoffs, picks up his water glass and sips a slow measure as he peers over the rim.

Naegi shakes his head, musters the ability to peel his vision away from the screen to pick his chopsticks through the shogayaki in Togami's lap-warming styrofoam container. "Not initially, but once I knew I had to...she kind of gave me strength, you know?" Chew, swallow. "Like- Like a character I really relate to and wish I could be."

"Sounds like asylum talk," he murmurs, yet ventures still, "Do tell, what exactly was this  _epiphany_ that led you to know murder was your life's calling?"

A veneer of shame coats his expression. "Uh," his utensils set down in the box, tapping fingertips to the side. "Well, this wasn't the plan, originally. After...after my parents... _died,"_ and Togami isn't too dense to human emotion to notice the personal lock around this, "me and my sister didn't really have...anything. And I was already an adult, so there wasn't much the government, or whatever, could do with me. But they wanted to place Komaru in some kind of foster care, and-" Emotion overwhelms him a moment, makes him pause for composure. He clears his throat once, takes a long sip of his smoothie and continues. "Anyways...I couldn't let that happen, so I pretty much begged Kuwata to let us stay at his place for a while, since he had so much extra room for no reason except  _'party space'._ "

Naegi rolls his eyes, though his lips twitch against what perhaps still sounds a fond memory. He seems to delve back within himself for further details, ones Togami does not especially care for, but remains a polite audience member.

"So," a sigh breaks through, "we moved in there, the place we live now. But Kuwata didn't have a job, he just lived off the money from playing a few years of minor league. And with three people, that ran out quick, and Komaru was still a minor at this point, so-"

"Wait," Togami stops him. The woman on the screen unsheathes her gleaming katana. "You mean to tell me she's an  _adult?"_

"Oh," he nods, sips another time. "Yeah, she's eighteen, but...well she took some time off school after our mom and dad... _yeah,_ 'cause she was in a really, really bad place. It's kind of like she just, lost a whole year of development kinda. I don't know, but that's not important."

Deference takes him over in silence to listen further. He stuffs a cheek with sticky rice. Naegi goes on, "I needed to find a job,  _fast._ I looked all over the country, practically, but no one wanted to hire a stupid twenty year old with no college degree or experience.  _Ha-_  I think I even applied at your company once." Another sigh floats with the story. "But, that obviously didn't work out, and it seemed pretty hopeless, until I found Enoshima and her modeling agency. And, before you make a comment,  _no,_ I didn't apply to be a model." His turns a look toward him, a merit-laced half glare that is just  _so_ knowing. "I just went in wondering if they needed any kind of secretary or-or  _something._ And they did, which I was super stoked about. Enoshima hired me as her personal assistant, and...well, like they say, the rest is history."

"That's it?" is his near demand. "You became a supermodel's bitch boy, and then one day had to start bashing skulls?"

"I mean, honestly...that's pretty accurate." He laughs, followed by a harsh exhale and a drag of a hand upward to aid him. "No, okay, see...Enoshima didn't actually run a modeling agency."

"Shocker."

Naegi frowns. "Yeah. It was just a way to hide all the sex, drugs...and rock n' roll, basically." Togami's brows furrow in the middle. He mends onward, "I mean, like, just  _everything._ The drug cartel was a side operation to make more money. It was mainly a...a model rental place, if you get that. And I was a pretty popular model to be rented, if you get  _that._ "

"Bragging?" Togami dares past the rim of his cup. There's a blink, a light flush fallen to pale cheekbones, a wave of hand.

" _Psh-_ No, not bragging," he says. "Getting screwed by a different stranger every night isn't as glamorous as it sounds." The sarcasm wraps a noose about him, fixes him to take on a staid atmosphere. "But then Enoshima had a falling out with her boyfriend, this Mat-Matsomething guy...and I guess you can see where I'm going from here."

"You killed him."

He hums a quick  _mhm_  of confirmation. "And the pretty redhead he was cheating with."

Silence. The Bride slashes the head off an adversary.

"Quite remarkable," Togami says at last, dabs a napkin to his mouth in a cover. "…Regardless of the assassin bit."

Neither wish to meet gazes, but find themselves equal in hues of inner flush.

Naegi's head shakes once, and he leans to place the remainder of his lunch to the coffee table. Idly, the edges of bandages surrounding his palm are picked at. "…And, uh, after that, I wasn't gonna kill again. Swore upon it. But then she promised all kinds of money and rewards- that was her thing, always making so many promises… She even said I didn't have do the escort thing anymore, as long as I managed the drug exports. Somehow, that turned into me stabbing anyone who looked at her funny and being her 'personal assistant' in a lot more… _personal_  ways. And you know, once you start that shit, there's no  _way_  you're quitting if you still wanna live to see tomorrow."

Sorrow very nearly clasps about him. But- but no, he has no place for that, to be concerned so with the grief of others. Sorrow has no place within him, and he realizes in a turbulent gust that it isn't sorrow at all, but  _envy_  in her ugliest breed. Envy that he's been had so many times by so many people, envy that he wasn't the first to feel Naegi Makoto sweating and writhing and begging beneath his touch. And with a sharp clink of glass to the end table aside him, aside sticky rice and gingered pork and hot crunchy broccoli in a styrofoam box that all mean  _nothing! nothing!_  in the wake of his coursing diplomacy. He wasn't the first to have Naegi, but he'll prove himself the best.

"-where you came into the picture," splits from his mouth, once Togami has tuned into this chapter. "All because Enoshima wanted to make a quick buck. Jeez, I can't imagine where I'd be right now if I'd actually…actually killed you that night."

"Right now?"

To him he gains attention. "Yeah. Like, I'd probably be spoon-feeding Enoshima flan while Tsumiki kisses her feet." His top lip sneers upward. "I'm more than glad that life is over."

Agenda switches pathways rapidly, evades normal course. One leg folds over the other. His elbow bends against the arm to the pristine white sofa, rests knuckles to his chin.

"…You don't have to do that any longer, if you wish not to," draws his client's eyes. "There are plenty of desk jobs available. I'd be open to offering you…an interview, at the very least."

Widen. Stare. "Really?"

His chest deflates in an exhale. "I suppose with both Munakata and Enoshima out of the way now, I've no enemies in immediate need of disposal. You clearly garner no enjoyment out what you do, and there's no reason for it to continue on." A katana slices through a samurai warrior's chest, splits him down the center with buckets of tasteless gore effects. His mouth etches into a frown. "Unless, of course, you'd like to continue on living like your hero up there-"

"No, no!" He waves his hands, leaning forward toward him, exuding gratitude in a touch to his chest. "I'd love to work for you. N-Normally! Yeah, I'd-I'd love that."

Togami's skin stains a hot flush. He doesn't know what's pushed such benevolence off the dock edge of his tongue, but when that unthinking tongue is in the mouth of another, he can't bring himself to dwell so closely on the issue. His hands run along the curve of Naegi's ass, lithe figure placed in a perfect straddle of his lap. Behind them, another samurai loses his skull and spurts a mess of blood skyward.

"Screwing your boss doesn't get you any extra perks, you do know," Togami insists against the heat of a kiss. Naegi pulls back, eyes still fallen closed and palms cupping each side of his jaw, plants kisses up the side of his face. Another  _mhm_ dots a smooch to his temple.

He doesn't know what's urged him to such generosity, but the reward that follows is rationale enough. Belt clicks, zipper tugs, fingers curl through soft brunette. Togami sighs in overwhelming contentment, and spreads his thighs wider.

Vaguely he thinks their relationship's advancement has approached rapidly, rapidly. He can hardly recall who the stranger that climbed through his window those weeks ago ever was, can't recall himself at any point beforehand. Naegi Makoto has absorbed his life, whether it is for the better or otherwise he has still yet to decide. From the looks of things now, seated in his living room together, watching a movie over lunch as though friends for decades, now with Naegi so vulnerable and so delicious on his knees before him- things now look wonderful, though everything tends to feel that way in the wake of a warm mouth bobbing against his cock. But, no,  _no,_ Naegi's good for him, Naegi's good for everyone, and things can only get gooder from this point onward. They'd destroyed their enemies, side by side, and...and _N_ _o he didn't! You didn't think Mako-chan would really betray me?!-_

His brain's fine course takes a snag to the wheels. It's the same trill that's clogged his thoughts like a square in a circle hole, a wad of gum jammed under his desk. And he's just run his fingers along the gooey mess of secondhand saliva. Enoshima Junko is-  _was -_ a good for nothing rat in a sewer.  _You didn't really think Ma-_ Yes yes yes he  _did_ really think,  _does_ really think, and there's no chance he'd have let himself be fooled so keenly by the crafty little bastard at his feet now. Not again, never again.

And still, his head throbs in the latency of  _what if._

_"You didn't think it was gonna be that easy, did you?"_

_"You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did."_

Metal music overpowers the delicate soundtrack of the film. The Bride wields her sword high, preparation to strike. Naegi swirls his tongue in a delectably skilled way.

No, he decides in the savor, Naegi Makoto would never play him in such a nasty way. Going against Togami Byakuya is the most punishable form of heresy.

He'd call the instrumental punk that chimes next a full-fledged Galileo in those terms; his mouth pops back to itself, squinting in the light of awareness. "Oh, he says in breathy humor, reaches over Togami's leg to retrieve the phone of the sofa's farther arm. "It's probably Kirigiri. Her plane should be landing any- ...minute."

Besides the illness of having been left dry, Togami shoots him a contemptuous look at his sudden pause, dark rimmed stare at the device in his dressed palm. After a zip and a click, Togami goes to offer verbal scorn, but hushes when the screen is turned toward him. The name  _Enoshima_ flashes across the top.

Togami skips the astonishment instead to  _seethe._ He snatches it from him, slides to answer and selects the speaker option before dropping it to the empty cushion. Naegi kneels with his face pressed close and  _baDUMbaDUMbaDUMbaDUM-_

Ambiance filters to life on the other side.  _"Makoto? Are you there, darling?"_

Their breaths stop cold, exchange a glance together. It's the same valley girl twang that had choked them days prior.

Where Naegi falters in response, a sharp tap to the shoulder and demanding eyes clear his throat.

"Uh, y-yeah. I'm here." His head swims. "...Enoshima? You're...okay?"

The woman huffs in a pouty toddler way. _"Far from it! You think you and your boy toy can just WALTZ right in here and kill my dear, dear sister?! I was supposed to be the one to do that!"_

" _Sister?"_ Naegi gawks.

"Boy toy?" Togami scoffs.

The news she spreads past her surefire devil's grin does not shock him as it should, but soaks him in steaming ire.  _Of course,_ there had to be a fucking catch.

Cackles bleed her disgusting speech.  _"You remember Mukuro-chaaan, don't you Makokoro? How despairingly beautiful is it for her to be shot down in COLD blood by the man she loved most?! Pretty kickass, if you ask me! AHA!"_

"Oh, my God." Fingers fold over his mouth, eyes bulging above them. Tears prick their corners. His lungs shudder. That primal rage engulfs Togami till he's knee deep in it and clawing holes in his palm heels from the clutch to his fists.

"Listen, you hundred-yen gutter slut, pay per view wannabe," he snaps in a sudden melt of flame, "Your worthless sibling was a warm up. You'll have your head on a stake before dawn breaks, I assure you."

_"Aww, can't wait, Kuya-chan!"_ she laughs. Her tone drops an octave, goes muffled a tad as if an entirely new being had taken over the conversation.  _"Though, it would be in Naegi's best interest to check in back home before going anywhere."_ The pitch returns to cutesy angelic.  _"'Kaaaay! Bye-bye, see you dicklickers later!"_

_Click. Beepbeepbeep._

Naegi's hands drop to reveal his wide circle of a mouth. "Wha-What does she mean, check in back home? Did she-did she- oh, my God-"

A call of his name is too late to catch his jump upward and tear into the foyer. Togami growls in fierce frustration, palms pressing against his face and elbows jutting bent. They drop in one swift note, pushes himself up from the couch to take after him. The phone rests sole on the empty sofa. Condensation drips past the coaster onto the glass coffee table top. The Bride stands before a crowd of one hundred slain victims.

"Makoto, you don't even have  _shoes_ on," he demands of him once he's found the runaway fumbling with the locked knob of the back entry. He slams a hand to the wood and renders it closed above his head. Naegi releases the knob to bang his fists futile against it.

"I need to  _go-"_

"What you  _need,"_ comes his pointed correction, "is to calm down. Behaving like a feral animal won't stop whatever sort of mind game she's playing with you."

"I don't care!" He ducks under his arm to race socks against hardwood the length to the front door. Togami meets it a second before, blockading his exit with a stretch of arms on either side.

" _Makoto-"_

"You don't  _get it!"_ Naegi rages, fists clenching at his chest and head flying in shakes. "It doesn't matter to you- you have no one to come home to anyway!"

They stop each at the drop of silence. Togami's arms lower slowly to either side, whilst Naegi stares in horror at himself, at what he's said, rivulets wet down each cheek.

"...Fine," Togami allows at last. "Have a nice walk, then."

"Oh, no- no, Byakuya, I-"

"Do  _not_  call me that." Oxygen runs clean through his lungs, mouth. Without word, he yanks the drawer out from the hutch aside him, shoulders his way outside with a keyring clutched over a knuckle. He doesn't bother waiting for his shadow, but hears the hops that follow at the same pace of pressing feet into Converse.

His Jaguar flies through the late afternoon simmer, slipping through just before rush hour. Naegi's fingers grip the leather seat covers until they're full white up to the wrists. Their pace cuts the trip down by a third, yet still feels a thousand aeons against the hot summer wind.

Togami's hardly stopped before Naegi's thrown himself out against the curb, stumbling in a sprint to reach the concrete steps upward. He trails him at a brisk one-two, sounding like a brigade stomping up the steps to the third floor. Met are they just as Naegi's shoving the key into the knob in frantic jitters of wrist, twisting jangling tugging until it clicks and he shoves inside with panic carrying him.

"Komaru?! Kuwata?! Are you-?!  _Oof-"_

His plight is stopped short in a rough bump into a chest once he's dashed into the living room. "Whoa, whoa! Where's the fire, bud?" Kuwata teases. Komaru stands just behind him, a look of concern flirting through her round hazel eyes. Seeing her brother in such dizzied disarray is no frontpage story, though the tears falling in globs down his cheeks don't ease her any.

The same notion hits Kuwata. "Hey, what's up, dude? Something spook ya?"

Naegi shivers against the effort of catching his breath. "I thought-" another harsh inhale "-thought something was go-going to happen to-" shallow exhale "-you guys."

Komaru materializes at his side after a quick step into the third bedroom. He coughs against the surprise of an inhaler pressed to his lips and squeezed once, twice, but it allows him final relax, hands pressed to bent knees and head hung as he sits on the near arm of a couch. There's a short exchange of gratitude, to which she nods, tucks fists to either hip. "Now, what did you mean? What could happen to us? Well," and she smirks with a shrug to her shoulder in their roommate's direction, "except for Leo-chi setting the microwave on fire again."

Indignance wipes his face, and to her neck his elbow wraps around to deliver a brotherly noogie. "Never gonna let me live that one down, are you, kid?" Shrieks of laughter and hands gripping his forearm push him away, leaving her to stumble a step away in a fit of smoothing her hair. "But, nah," he assures Naegi, who drops the half-smirk he'd managed. "Nothing to worry about, Naegs. Things are all good here."

A final breath outward leads his acceptance. "Alright... But I just-"

"Quiet."

A trio of visions set upon the source. It's the first interjection Togami has demanded thus far, placed idle by the archway leading to the kitchen where his suspicion darts. Faint, subtle. His hearing hones in and he's the best police dog any force has ever leashed.

Lightning- he snaps back to them. "Move."

"Togami, wha-?" Naegi tries, but a shrill yelp halts him, and he watches as his sister has her wrist grasped and dragged in a sprint back toward the door. He bothers not with returning Kuwata's confused glance his way before taking off after them, the other in tow.

They make it down the sets of stairs, and Komaru's been tossed unceremoniously into the backseat to caterwaul her protests. The car's already begun moving by the time the two men leap into it.

"Fuck's the deal, dude?" Kuwata says, knuckles gripping the seat behind the driver's shoulder. "You're acting like a bomb was about to go off or somethin'!"

Togami spares only a dark wavering look unto the rear view mirror, and in that reflection just moments following bursts a mess of hellfire.

The noise is deafening. All three other occupants of the vehicle swivel to gaze at the wreckage, now several miles over the horizon and only getting farther with Togami's madly weighted hold of foot to the gas pedal. Shrapnel tinkers down amongst the roaring flames of their building.

" _Shit!_ " hollers Kuwata once the stun has been ruptured, sits back straight in a heavy fall against the seat. His powder blue eyes are huge rolling marbles stuck into his skull.

Komaru clutches either side of her head in a vast gape to her mouth. "All our stuff was in there!"

"You're lucky to even have your lives," Togami bites as he swerves into an angled turn.

Seatbeltless, the two in the back fall against the door in a jumble of yelped complaints.

To his left breathes only silence. He dares a look toward Naegi, who bears a paleness to rival notebook paper, stare blank and enormous toward the dashboard.

"She…" his dried lips try, "She killed everyone. Everyone in that whole building."

A staid knit takes Togami's face as he focuses back to the drive. He allows the speedometer to dip once the smoldering remnants are no longer taunting them. Kuwata leans forward again between the two front seats.

"You mean that pink-haired bitch with the big rack?" he guesses in awe, to which Naegi swallows, nods once.

"She…she would've…you both would've been…" More tears capture him again, covers his mouth with quaking fingers.

They cruise forward onto the edge of the bay bridge. Evening takes on the sky across it, dipped through warm orange inks in a watercolor wash. The beginnings of mayhem claim tugs at the city corner; a siren woops down the intersecting road behind them. Several civilians walking along the bridge's sidewalk border stare toward the scene of the damage in wonder, air still reverberating hot with destruction.

Naegi doubles forward, and wretches up strawberry milkshake onto the upholstery betwixt his feet.


	11. Chapter 11

"-but, I  _swear,_ I thought it was just a regular modeling agency."

Three seats are taken in his living room, left in the remnants of the calm before the storm; Togami returns after throwing out the rest of half-picked lunches in their containers, Tchaikovsky at his heels and licking a wide set of incisors with drool dripping. He shoos the animal away, where he instead finds comfort hopping atop the pile of two other dogs laid across the loveseat and Komaru's lap. Her hand runs along Chopin's tummy while she listens to her brother finish off his story, resting over the second couch with a forearm covering his eyes from the light. Beneath his stretched legs, Kuwata sits upright, absorbing the information in one hard to swallow lump.

"...I knew you didn't work in construction," he says at last, and Naegi lifts his arm to peer downward at a shy-to-form wolf's grin. Kuwata pats his shin. "It's alright, Naegi. You did what you had to. That's what makes a real man."

From his ease into the room, Togami pieces together the full story that had been divulged, supposing it similar to the same he'd heard. Until- "Yeah, Makoto." Komaru smiles tentatively into the wet licks to her cheek. "It's not your fault your pimp blew up the house. You never hurt anyone and you didn't now."

Naegi still cannot force mirth upon his face, though his sigh does not harbor any refusal.  _Never hurt anyone-_ Togami would spurn that smartly, were Naegi not tied to him like cement shoes. He sees not, either, the harm in leaving the murder bit out of his autobiography. Their knowing would benefit nothing, and the whole ordeal has no further hearts to hush- save for  _one,_ but he reminds himself of patience to go through with that aspect, reminds himself patience within these grubby strangers all decimating the perfection of his white velvet furniture.

He places himself on the jutting end of the sectional Naegi rests on. Those eyes turn to him, and he meets them in an expressionless haze.

"So, ah" breaks into the silence. The stud in Kuwata's chin flexes with a purse to his mouth. "What do we do now?"

"Um," is Naegi's only solvent, before setting his stare back on Togami, who refuses adamantly to meet it. He'd anticipated this, the pathetic snivels of begging to stay just one night, Togami-san, please oh please! that turns into two days, a week, a decade. He'd rather foot the bill of an eternal hotel than allow that.

Komaru has her own idea, evidently. "We can stay with Togami-chi, of course!"

"Don't call me that," Togami-chi says. Lenses adjust above his nose. "And no, you most certainly will not."

It does not deter her outgoing self. "Aw, but Glitter, Cupcake, and Princess already like me so much-"

" _Whom?_ " Togami demands, and she laughs.

"Glitter," she points to the dog she lavishes in affection, "Cupcake," points to the one lain at her side, "and Princess," pats the chest of the one panting in her face. He licks her cheeks again. "The names you told me before were too long, I can't remember them. So those are their new names!"

Thin goes his eyes in a glare, disgust and acrimony. "You're certain you're only behind one year in mental development?"

"Hey-!"

"Alright," Naegi barks into it, urging himself upward to sit against the arm. "Togami...could we-?"

"No."

Naegi blinks, pouts, knows his way around the other far to well for his liking. "Please? Just until we can find a new place?"

While his arms stay folded tight, his resolve cannot say the same. "...Stay at a hotel."

"Man, hotels suck!" is Kuwata's educated reasoning. "It's like, two-thousand yen for a nip of Grey Goose in those dinky little fridges. And the room service lady always tucks my sheets in too tight. This is why I can't be a musician, too much travel time cooped up in those places."

"And that you stink at every instrument," Komaru says before Togami can, and he's almost disappointed yet delighted all the same. Silver flashes in a prod of his tongue toward her, thumbs in the ears and fingers wagging. Ludwig van Cupcake shouts a loud, gleeful bark.

"It won't be long, I promise," scoops back Togami's attention. "I'll- I'll even let you count that as my pay for working for you. No more checks, just let us crash for a while. Please?"

Exasperation ties a noose around his neck. Naegi's gushy puppy eyes kick the chair.

Dusk draws with the spread of fresh sheets over a queen guest bed.

"Thank you, Togami." Little hands move forward to smooth it across the mattress. "We all really appreciate it. We won't cause any trouble, I promise."

At the open doorway, Togami stands a silhouette, arms crossed and one leg bent to rest against the frame. The cool guy act he feigns is to save himself the mortification of his mushy soup of a heart. Or, at least, that's what it's becoming- he's one miracle away from sainthood, what with all this magnanimity spilling out as of recent. Needless, it's all needless. He huffs a sigh, watching Naegi finish the preparation of the third, final guest bed.

Pattering footsteps creep the hall. "Killer," makes him pause in a tremble of that broth for a heart, but quells himself at the bright beam Kuwata sports, face poked into the room and sights set upon the fresh comforter. It rumples beneath him every which way in a dive into the center, spreads out on his back with a blissful  _ahh._ "I call this room," he says, relaxing his muscles in a circle of shoulders before resting palms behind his head. Naegi tosses the last pillow at his face.

More steps trail into the room. Togami peers at her a moment, intakes the color hidden beneath her front of justice. He thinks her an interesting character, regardless of what connotation the description holds. "Makoto...will you stay in the room next to mine?"

Wiping hands to his thighs, Naegi nods without hesitating. His sister seems to relax a touch, though stiffens again in the wake of a voice.

"Aw, is the wittle baby afraid of sleeping alone?" Kuwata tugs the pillow from his face, snorting and gagging on humor.

Her cheeks puff. Naegi steps once backward, moving in time to her and going to stand by the doorway as she steals his place. Still howling in her jeers, Kuwata is choked in surprise by the jump atop him, struggling to pin his thrashing arms down.

"No!" she insists, huffing with the effort of attempted restraint. "Are you afraid of-of washing your socks?!"

One lifts from a curl of knee into his chest and makes to press at her face, which strains at the neck in her long shriek of  _eww!_

Sunsets filter through Naegi's gaze as he watches onward, starts at a tone beside him. "It must have been fun growing up with  _that."_

He glances toward the speaker a moment, then back to the scene unfolding on the bed. Though it bleeds heavy with sarcasm, Naegi nods regardless. "Yeah." The clamor is endless, now Kuwata the one supplying the shrieks at having had his wrists at last captured and horrified eyes tucked to the line of spit dangling in a threat above him. Naegi grins. "She learned that one from me."

Togami rolls his eyes.

"Alright, alright- truce!" Kuwata coughs out in laughter. "Can't fight on an empty stomach. I say we get the boob tube goin' and order some pizza."

A long slurp brings the drool back past her lips. "Pizza? What are you, white? Let's get ikameshi."

The short back and forth of  _gross!_ vs you're  _gross!_ ends in another play wrestle between two growling lion cubs, ends with Togami turning his long-legged shadow opposite with arms still met. "Get whatever you want, Naegi knows my card information." The double  _oooo_ in teenage lovey delight snaps his glare back toward them, and they freeze in their position of hands twined in struggle and knees prodding stomachs. "I'm going to bed."

All goodnights are ignored, a shake of shoulder and twist of hips to the master bedroom down the vast hall. His tie furls away with the tug of a finger, jacket and pants following into the hamper. Undressing into nightclothes carries him to heavy sit to his mattress, curving beneath his legs still bent over the side.

And he sighs.

Long and tired and through his nose. The last five hours have been a week and a half, and the time before that no sweet meringue either. He'd gone from complaining of boredom to an overnight sensation of his soul's rebirth. He'd felt it since the moment that first bullet had entered Enoshima's- well, her clone, or  _whatever the fuck -_ had entered the pinup doll lucifer's flesh. He'd felt that twinge of...something, something he could not at the time place. A taste unknown, yet full lingering. Though he hadn't time to dwell on it; his contemplation more pressingly had been consumed by the stupid puppy sleeping two doors down. Togami does not  _give up,_ nor is facing defeat in his mindspan, though he feels the niggling urge to drop those ghosting, echoing last words of Fake-oshima Junko. She'd held no authenticity in even her persona, what evidence does that gift to her words playing veracious their melody? And, even so, betrayal is all part of the game.

If Naegi had gone and plucked his strings in such a wicked tune, he'd have to almost harbor some pride toward it. The strange little fiend that had washed up on the shore of his existence had grown in the short time they've claimed acquaintance. Naegi is everything he never wanted. Naegi is seaglass smoothed by the tides of his mouth. Naegi is the gooey saccharine buttercream he can't wait to dip his fingers in.

Or, he supposes he has already had his licks. But that doesn't satiate him, nor does the inanity mixed newly into his life's cocktail. Nothing and everything had happened all at once, all today, all everyday, and yet the ones left to regrow after devastation have the ability to sport grins like starshine. No sense finds them, by his accumulative knowledge of human behavior. He doesn't understand how out of such  _failure,_ controllable or otherwise, that one can engage in the joviality of tabbies rolling through catnip. Determination, he concludes after a bit. Admirable determination.

But that isn't what he cares to think about any longer for now, for this tired now where he's spent so much time just sitting on his bed's edge and rolling over pondering, over and over, over over over- He doesn't care to think about Naegi's traits or growth or talents, or how good he is at giving blow jobs or how cute his ass would look in lingerie or- Togami doesn't quite understand human behavior, but knows certain his infatuation has yet to taper off despite his pleading. But pleading gets no one nowhere, only diligence, efficiency. To stop viewing Naegi Makoto as his personal cock-holder, it'll be the strong will, that same determination he finds so delicious.

So, naturally, he slips his hand beneath the hem to his briefs and spends another half an hour thinking about Naegi Makoto.

He licks each his fingertips in the satisfaction of the sweaty breathless afterglow. Below the blankets he tugs up to his bare chest is a mess, but he quite likes to be filthy sometimes, he thinks. And that's new, and that's another affect of having Naegi at his side through all the day's seconds. But he decides he'd rather sleep with the wet of his own cum dripping down his thighs than ever allow that name to cross through his head again.

"Togami..?"

It's three quaint raps to his bedroom door, and a voice he recognizes, the voice that's just danced in desperate  _oh, Byakuya, mmmh-_ through his fantasies. He considers faking sleep to be a nutritious option. But he hasn't the gall of fogged mind to court a plan of action before his tongue's already married, "What?"

He does not can not will not comprehend how  _what_ translates through the guest's skull as  _come on in!_ but Naegi's pushed inside despite it, door clicking behind, dressed down to his faded band tee shirt and underwear. Sleep leaves tire streaks beneath his eyes while driving circles about him. Togami doesn't understand, either, how entering a room is fair game to sit on the empty side of the bed and release an exhale of comfort's promotion, but Naegi is just full of stupid surprises, he's long since learned.

"Hey," he says lame, runs a hand lightly across the fresh white sheets. "Uh, they ordered yakisoba and chicken karaage out there, if you're hungry."

Togami does not face him. "Not in the slightest."

He hears Naegi sigh another time, feels his nod and pulsing emotion behind it all. Then it's the shifting of blankets, and he does whip into a look over a bare shoulder, and Naegi's lain down and faced the opposite wall in a manner too close for his comfort.

"Komaru fell asleep in my bed," he says without anyone inquiring, then breathes a half-chuckle. "And so did the dogs."

_Lot of traitors,_ he thinks, but does not spare the utterance in hopes of silence igniting his departure. Rather, however, he takes on his signature mile-a-minute mouth in a retelling of every little thing he can possibly stuff inside his brain. In the middle of describing a concert he'd attended with his roommate the prior summer, which had emerged from mentioning his favorite place to get smoothies, which had- In the middle of his rambling, Togami cuts the tightrope from beneath his feet.

"Makoto," he begins, " _what_ do you want?"

He stops short, swerves veers, crashes into a four-car pile up of thought and feeling.

It only takes seconds before Togami hears the first miserable sniff.

"Uh," and his voice cracks even with the effort of the single utterance, "I'm sorry."

"For?"

_For everything, start to now, middle side and side-_ "...For what I said earlier. I-I shouldn't have been such a jerk."

And this day's felt so many millions of distances, he hardly has the capacity to recall it. "What- Saying I've got no one? Therefore implying I'll die alone, bitter and wheezing out my final regrets?"

"See, no, I didn't mean anything like that," he swears, sitting up against the headboard and tucking his face into his elbow for a wipe of tears quickly. He coughs, wipes sniffs. "I was just...panicked, you know? I'm s-"

"I do not wish to hear your pathetic apologies where they are not due, Naegi Makoto." Molars hug against one another, then relax in an exhale. "Nothing you said was not factual, nor was it upsetting. You're dwelling on useless dribble, and you look a fool crying over it. Man up."

Layers of mortification mummify his core. "...You're right, sorry. I mean- I mean...not sorry."

"I can practically feel the testosterone from here," is his facetious bite. They settle, even and quelled, yet still his ears ring upon that sharp tang of pity. A groan pushes him upward on an elbow, turns inward from the waist up to startle him. "What on earth could you possibly be whining over now?"

Several attempts to collect himself restart at the quiver of a lip, leak of eyes. He finalizes burrowing his face into his palms. His head shakes loosely.

"I should have never agreed to kill any-anyone." Sobs shudder through his chest. "That's not who I am, Togami. She...she mesmerized me in a way I don't even understand."

Gradually, after he's cast a thorough examining, Togami lays back into his spot, though it wraps him twice as chilled as before. All the growth and determination- he decides it all void now. Naegi's a malleable brat. Bending like fronds in a breeze. Yet, he has no complaints besides a stiffen of muscles when an arm goes around his middle and a nose to his shoulder, nuzzles deep, mars him in moisture and black eyeliner.

"That's not who I am," Naegi mumbles again. Togami stays rigid in place.

Slowly, as though tender touches upon porcelain, his hand is lifted from where it rests at Togami's front. A tight length of a kiss presses to his knuckles, and the world doesn't seem so big anymore.


	12. Chapter 12

The warmth is gone by the time he's awoken. Naegi's thieved it up in a fade down grand stairs. Sunlight seems to follow him wherever his steps should fall.

He follows the pathway to the first story, tucking cuffs into sleeves and mouth wet with craving of the smell of coffee that draws him into the kitchen, moth to light dog to chow. And all three of his are doing just so once he enters, fed by another, coffee made by another- hell, he wouldn't be surprised if he could get Naegi to kiss his goddamn feet in exchange for his new temporary living space. In his mind, as he pours the rich brew into his favorite (and freshly washed) mug, he's sure to remind himself the emphasis on  _temporary._

"Togami?" his  _temporary_ guest questions in a swing through the kitchen doors. He perks a perfectly sculpted flaxen brow to insinuate his attention. Naegi seems to relax a bit, even smiles through his next lilting. "Ah- I saw you walk by without saying anything, I didn't know if you were angry or something." That catches him in confusion; he'd been so wrapped up in his psyche he hadn't noticed the whole presence of another. Slacking. "But, we're all in the other room, if you want to join us."

"I didn't realize I needed an invitation to be in my own home," Togami snips, blowing steam from his drink in a walk toward the door. Naegi scrambles to mend himself, stuttering little apologies and explanations as he follows into the dining area. The rest of this new  _we_ is set in the downstairs living room, separated only by a partial wall that allows their position on the couch and cartoon flashing by on the TV to be in his view. Neither notice his presence as he hadn't theirs on his first trip past, Kuwata busied guffawing at animated robotic violence with a mouthful of cold leftovers. The second holy angel of annoyance sits beside him, hands around the cup in her lap and face blank in dismality. He spends a long minute studying her, the gloss over her eyes and the red-rims beneath them. Even once Princess Tchaikovsky ambles from the kitchen licking his chops to rub his head against her knees, she does not budge from her orb of dejection.

"Uh, she's not handling some news too well," whispers Naegi, before he moves to sit himself in one tall-backed dining chair, and Togami forces himself from staring to join him, though he starts in a jump that sloshes a tablespoon of coffee onto the hardwood.

"She was rather fond of my assistant on her occasional visits," the surprise guest says lowly before sipping a length of tea.

Togami couldn't be water tortured to say he relates. He's hesitant to sit with them at the table, though deems it a better spot than in the company of Duke Dumbass and Duchess Depression, and places himself neatly at the head of the table where he belongs. Kirigiri never acknowledges him properly, which he finds just so disgustingly rude, abhors her in his home at all. Their one meeting had left him with sour milk splashing in his skull.

But her presence makes Naegi happy, so- so since when does he care about that? But-

And then Naegi laughs into himself a bit, and he can't recall what he'd been going on about inside.

"I was supposed to pick Kirigiri up from the airport yesterday," he says in a hint of shame, though patched since over with bemusement. "But got, uh, caught up with...y'know, my apartment burning down."

Togami eyes him in a curiously critical way, guessing Naegi hadn't disclosed the tidbit about the sociopath detonating a bomb stuck underneath his kitchen table (which, at the very least, was finally moved from that godawful spot, he thinks in tasteful irony). Though- concrete shoes. He keeps quiet, and the other goes on.

"Anyway, ah, she offered to take me, Komaru, and Kuwata to get some clothes and toiletries, and stuff. I have enough cash left on me to do a pretty good thrift store run for the three of us." He sounds almost proud of this. Togami's face twitches. "Oh- and to see if my car's still in one piece."

It pushes a snort from him without meaning. "I can assure you, that will be to no avail."

Fragility scrawls across his face. Togami stares sans remorse, sips from his mug to excuse himself from speech.

"Anyway..." Naegi starts again, digging back into his head for where his thought train had been going, but withdraws only a long  _uhmmm..._

"We should be going," Kirigiri says in his place, clunking her emptied cup to the tabletop. Naegi appears startled a moment, but nods to her beckoning and stands with her. He dips around the open wall of the living room to collect the other two, who rise in a click of the television turned off and shuffle forward. Komaru sniffs idly, and Naegi takes her milk mug from her in a gesture of kindheart. He rolls his eyes when Kuwata pins him with his own dishes as well, then makes for the kitchen and back in a quick back-forth set of swings to the door. Wet hands swipe across his jeans upon his return, watches idly the other two placing themselves into shoes, coats, preparations.

"Naegi," calls Togami in a short command. The owner of the name does a one eighty, waiting in silent head-tilted wonder for what is needed of him. A leg uncrosses from its rest over Togami's second knee, and he pushes a hand into the side pocket to his slacks and retrieves a thin leather wallet. "Take this," he says, offering a credit card between two fingers with all the nonchalance in the world. Naegi balks.

"Oh- no, no, Togami!" which the newfound philanthropist of course knew would be coming, "It's fine, really. I have enough-"

"If you're going to be living here and representing my home, I don't want you looking like someone who begs to wash my windshield on the expressway." He forces the card forward more. "Take it."

In all the hesitance able to be mustered by a single lifeform, Naegi reaches forward to accept it, holds it as though it were made out of exotic golds and gems and not just capable of purchasing them. "Thank you, so much," and he bows. "I won't spend too much, don't worry."

"Buy a damn country for all I care," Togami murmurs into another sip of coffee as the quad is exiting through the foyer. The door clicks in a drown of light chatter and over-the-shoulder goodbyes.

And he's alone.

Never before was it something he'd ever pick out as a point of dawdling. Solitude was the background noise to everyday, the ambient clink of windchimes not noticed until they're taken down. Being alone had never bothered him, until he'd had a taste of its sister, bitter at the first few swallows though decadent the rest of the way through. That lingering flavor of company he cannot get off his mind. And he hates it- hates that he'd rather have gone to some shitty department store with people he hardly knows and hardly likes, than to sit in the vast peace of his home, free to do anything he pleases. Yet- that's a given for any time, anywhere, regardless of the other mingling breaths through the establishment. He's Togami Byakuya, though lately he feels himself a toned down version. A college student post wild high school years. An old married couple, he to himself in unbending loyalty. On that same notion, the idea sizzles his throat in some desperate type of longing, and that's the deciding factor that he needs to get out of the house more.

He starts that journey with a grasp of keys, flick of lights, palm to a soft muzzle on his trek into the garage. It's one of  _those_ days, he thinks, and his thighs hug the gentle purr of his Harley to the first line of mid-morning traffic down the way. A glance left and rightways monitors the area around him, a dozen vibrating engines stuck in place by the glowing carmine light. The opportunity gifts him with a smoke to his lips. He pockets the lighter just as it flashes to green.

Not a single place sounds better than a current existence in nowhere. People pass in a blur around him, buildings, trees, cars. It's all de minimis to his life, just as everything other than his own self and own worth. He's above it all- his knocked out teeth would earn more than any of these strangers parading the sidewalks make in a year. But it's...slipping, his feeling of eminence. To think his personality's been influenced by changes around him is fulfilling in a sense, though wrapped so snugly in sickness that he cannot taste the pride. His authority is slipping, it's slipping and his hands are wet against grasping it back.

He chooses a destination upon the promise of doing so. The cigarette crushes to the curb beneath his shoe.

Eleven AM isn't prime time for a strip joint visit, but there's an ass in his lap and whiskey scorching his tongue, so he quite honestly cannot be bothered to care what hour the clock strikes.

It's cool and dark inside the so classily named  _Wet Hole Carnival._ His immediate sights had been set upon the open bar to the side, where he'd sat and ordered a drink and a lap-warmer. The woman is plump in all the right places, which to Togami is  _all_ the places, gorgeous and too strawberry-blonde to be natural, running a finely manicured hand up-down his chest. Fluorescence glows their skin a subtle zaffre.

This is the epitome of control over his life, he thinks. Dozens of whatsernames fawning over his every demand- there's truly no better feeling than having his commands followed. Lately that aspect of himself has been drug through the mud, but returned to him now, tugs a smirk to his face and a slap to this stranger's ass out of glory for his accomplishments.

"No touching," she snaps immediately, glares at him through layers of mascara. White fluff lines the cups of her pink bra, a useless little bow stuck in between two luscious breasts. Togami gazes at her line of cleavage with all the zeal of a slice of burnt toast.

"I in no way am obligated to comply to you," he shoots back. Liquor fills his mouth in a long authoritative swallow.

She turns a sneer toward him. "You ought to be nicer to me."

"Being nice gets you absolutely nowhere in life," his glass gestures toward her. "The mean bitch right here is a multi-trillionaire. Meanwhile, you shake your ass for banknotes from lonely troglodytes hopped up on Viagra. Tell me again, where does kindness get you?"

"Oh, trust me, I'm not nice," she answers back, voice taking on that lusty purr that earns her those banknotes. A palm strokes sweetly to his cheek. "And you're the one paying me."

It processes through him a while. The girl's got a point, he has to grant, teeth clinking against his second drink's rim.

"There's a modeling agency in Yokohama I think you'd be just perfect for," Togami tells her keenly, to which an eyebrow perks.

"If you want to fuck me so badly," is her response's beginning, making him grit his molars to having been bested, "there's a room right in the back. And a thirty thousand yen fee, but I'm sure that's no issue for you, Mister Multi Trillionaire."

Before he finds the wit, he scoffs back, "I have someone for that already." His blood slows in its circulation. The words are a choke, a cough, though all the same a liberation unlike any he's felt.

Her thighs shift to either side of his hips, arms around his shoulders and smirk an inch from his lowlit flush. "So do I. And he's just as tall, blonde, and stupid as you."

That smirk is mirrored, and palms go again to each half of her supple behind. "Oh,  _baby,"_ he breathes, "all I can think about right now is taking you back to my place, ripping your viscera from your abdomen and strangling you with them."

The dirty talk ends with a shove of her from his lap. She stumbles on one tall stiletto, catching a random stack of bills tossed at her from his wallet. He's vanished through the front door before she's even finished adjusting the straightness of her brassiere.

Back to the road take his tires, tearing aimless in his blazing plight across the capital city. A curt stop now would mean a plunging suicide one hundred meters to the pavement. Wind carries his hair in silky waves, burns his eyes to aridity. The trip had been a pointless one; he'd wanted out of the house, out of his self-scrutiny, only to be strung in the midst of a streetwalker's scorn. He could spit in his rage.  _Be nicer-_ amiability is what's ruining his life.

His goal must be to ruin it right back, comes ultimately to him in a harsh turn against the current of breeze, back the direction he'd come from. Ruin it hard to unrecognizable oblivion.

Hot July air taunts his gleaming teeth.


	13. Chapter 13

Quarter past four strikes his return home, keys jangling and hairline glazed subtly in sweat. He hears the booming barks long before three hundred pounds of muscular canines rush into the foyer. His stride toward the living room is not deterred by their wagging, whining, lovey dovey welcome, yapping and jumping all the way with him. The cargo in his hands lifts past their curious noses, ones that hardly relent their snuffling all up his fresh ironed pants. One of them sneezes with the overwhelming scent of laundry soap and cologne. He doesn't know which, hasn't cared to look at them until three footprints away from his destination. And he goggles in revulsion, because he's never seen his three handsome healthy Dobermans turned into such pansies as they are now with their torsos donning vibrant fabric.

"What have you done?" His glower hones in on Komaru as soon as he's stepped into the den. She turns from her spot on the couch facing the television to smile sweetly at him. It's a similar scene to when he'd last met her, though a full overhaul in personality, which he guesses is attributed to her newly tuned appearance. A blue sundress flows over just plain  _ugly_ paisley-print leggings. He notes the full face of pretty makeup and done nails wrapped around a cone supporting a drippy scoop of pale yellow ice cream. A thin silver crown completes the look, one Togami thinks is garishly juvenile, but if a tiara and some ice cream is what it takes to make her stop moping around worthlessly-  _hell -_ he'd rent out a whole fucking castle.

"We bought them sweaters!" she explains as if it were not already so blatant. The answer brings him back to the present, outside of leering at her teenage idiocy. "Dressing them in different outfits gives them a better sense of identity and self worth. Plus, it gets cold in here with the AC running all the time."

From below him, where he aims a long scowl, Glitteric Chopin matches his stare, barking one loud yap and turning himself into a donut to gnaw at his white cashmere pullover.

Togami closes his eyes. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

"Hey, who are those for?" the one next to her utters in pure nosiness. Kuwata appears just the same as he had this morning and the night before, the same knee-ripped jeans and graphic tank top and useless silver chains he'd more than likely been wearing for the past week straight. His finger juts toward the bushel of scarlet roses resting in Togami's arms, and his mouth claims a bawdy curve. "Meet some lucky lady while you were out today?"

His eyes snap apart from their vexed fall shut in the same time the fourth Beatle (or seventh Ramone, if the trio of dogs all scratching at their newly found self worth are accounted for) emerges from the open wall to the dining room.

"Is Togami home-? Oh!" Either of his hands hold a plate and a dish cloth drying across its edge. His face turns to a soft smile at his question's answer standing the few feet apart from him, drinking in the look of him. "There you are. There's a little container of mint Häagen-Dazs in the freezer. I picked it up when we stopped at the supermarket on our way back, 'cause I know it's your favorite. The banana is Komaru's, but I'm sure she'd share." From her seat she nods, tongue moving across the named dessert in the same beat. Naegi smiles wider, shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts and make room for more rambling. "We only stopped to get you milk and stuff, and then she wanted ice cream and Kuwata wanted some weird soda- uh, but-but I paid for it, so don't worry...um." The drying rag runs across his forehead briefly, before he sets both it and the cleaned plate down on the table behind him, takes a deep breath and places palms to either round hip. "Anyways, how was your day? I didn't expect you to be gone when Kirigiri dropped us back here."

Togami hasn't the slightest idea a single syllable of what he's just said, but he'd heard the inflection of a question toward the end, so he fakes like he'd been listening rather than running his hungry sight all up the tight curve of his new jeans, every bit of skin visible beyond the fresh black v-neck and familiar leather jacket.

Naegi's mouth drops a bit when he finds his question ignored, bites his inner cheek with a knit to his eyebrows. "Togami? ...Are you feeling okay?"

In a similar pattern to the last, this one finds itself no answer, rather just the step forward of its recipient in meekness never once run through him. Naegi peers upward at him in wonder the whole way. His expression floods with pink-tinged surprise at the thrust of his arms forward.

"Makoto," he starts, unfolding into an implosion of vulnerability. The one placed before him now, weak-kneed and starry-eyed, accepts the bouquet gingerly, bright vibrant red and bursting with springtime. "Would you like to go to dinner with me tonight?"

Whatever program the two others had been brainlessly ogling is far less interesting than the show they tune into now; snooping they are in their exuberant yet all at once astonished gazes fixed upon them. Kuwata's mouth fights between grin and gawk. Banana ice cream drips onto Komaru's index finger.

Naegi can hardly lock eyes with him. His cheekbones' burn rivals the petals that feel pure silk beneath his wandering fingertips. At last, those lips that purse together upon the initial question break free into a delighted simper, and he says with all the candor in the world, "I'd love to."

Togami flexes into the bliss of his dominance.  _This-_ this is the epitome of control over his life.

"Ooo, you guys are in  _looove,"_ shatters the moment like hammer to silica. Togami folds his glare over a shoulder to Kuwata's stupidly smirking visage, rolls his eyes at the pair of thumbs that prod skyward from the second cheerleader.

The teasing only brings bubbly laughter to Naegi's lips, skin still scorched and hands trembling the slightest to match his voice. "I'm-I'm gonna go put these in some water. Thank you, Togami, they're gorgeous."

"Byakuya," is his only response. Naegi blushes darker, ducks his head to hide his beam as he turns to enter the kitchen.

That leaves him with his shoulders burning against the unrelenting eavesdroppers. He exhales, swivels in one sharp about-face, looks them each over in a harsh note.

"You are not to gossip on about business that isn't yours." He divides the pique between them. "And there will be no nonsense in this house tonight when we are gone. If one thing is a millimeter out of place, one glass broken, one  _fiber_ missing from the throw blankets- you'll regret ever stepping into my domain. Are we clear?"

"Okay,  _Mom,"_ Kuwata mocks, tosses his hands up in incredulity. "Jeez, 's like you're reading me my Miranda rights."

"Aww, Togami-chi is so  _cute!"_ Komaru's hands clap together gleefully. The flat bottom to her ice cream cone sits on the side table, dripping to the floor and vanishing in frantic laps of three fighting tongues. "Don't worry about us, enjoy your date. I'll make sure things stay in tip-top shape!"

Another thumb upward punctuates it, accompanied by her look of brave tenacity. In some far off corner of Togami's head, he trusts her words, trusts her entirety. Perhaps it is the visual similarity of herself and the sharer of her genetics he's adopted such a strong affinity for. Either way, he'd sooner entrust her with the power to pull his plug than he would rely on Kuwata Leon to bring him his shoes.

After strong hesitance, he nods once, continues the path to clip up to his second story bedroom. When again he steps downstairs, the sky has darkened to lingering summer daylight, and he'd already been so perfect on the ascent it's hard to imagine anything better. But the two hours worth of primping do him well, so much so that his date for the night (which he'd practiced saying a multitude of times in his bedroom mirror, and at last has come to the comfortable allowance of it) is left in stunned appreciation at his breathtaking regality. Neatly combed hair, the faultless touch of subtle liner around already gorgeous eyes. He likes too, Togami can tell by the lengthy look taken up and down him, how the white suit with matched dark cross-tie and tight toed shoes all fit against his physique. The smirk to his lips ties it all together.

The inside of the Mercedes is small and warm and dark, windows tinted against the city lights that wink along the horizon. The air's cooled enough to let his arm rest free out the open window, surfing currents through their drive.

It's a five star place in the middle of Tokyo, less so the flashing neon of tourist central on the outskirts, and hardly a place for them to flock at all, considering it has no native sights for them to gawk and leer over. Waiters bustle around linen-clothed tables. By the way Naegi tugs his blazer tighter against his middle, Togami can sense he feels the sudden sting of being underdressed. He's glad for it; that only aids the value of his own appearance.

The lighting is dim much like the car ride, meeting their seven of the clock reservation in tinkering minutes before that allow them a six:fifty-four seating. They take a booth at Naegi's request, short backed and hard bottomed and unlike the cushioned privacy he's used to in all the shabbier eat-in places around their corner of the island. Togami opens up new worlds in even the slightest of ways, he knows.

His current world is tucked behind his trifold menu, strange symbols for words spelt out across the lamination, his ability to read them helped none by Togami's murmur of, "Left to right." Everything is the same mess of hardly-recognizable letters he could not even make an attempt at pronouncing. In a stroke of vacillation, he sets it down folded to the table, pouts like a puppy dog and earns a chuckle at his incapability. When a suited and tied man approaches the table beside theirs, Togami raises a finger in a demand to be called upon first. The waiter does not hesitate in his steps toward him. They gaggle back and forth a moment in that mushy gushy language that to Naegi sounds incomprehensible, a million syllables glued together in one long word that seems endless, mixed in with some vague gestures thrown his way and a goodnatured laugh from the stranger with the pen in his hand.

He walks off with their menus in hand, chuckling still, leaves Naegi blinking dumbly in his spot. "Uh...did you order for both of us?"

"You'll like it," is Togami's nonanswer answer. Assurance does not fit him so perfectly, combs his face in uncertainty, though his mind trails elsewhere with the delicate placement of a glass in his hand by the stem. It's a pale almond color, and smells of a strong tartness when Naegi dares a sniff as he swirls it idly at the bottom of the glass. He glances up to the remainder of the wine in a bottle at the table's center, an identical portion to his in his date's hand and their waiter trailing back through the kitchen's swinging doors. His attention goes back to Togami in his slow lean forward, clinks their glasses at the rims and tips his head in splendor. Tentative at the lips is the other, though he downs a sip likewise. Wine is a delicacy he's never before exposed himself to, yet all the same appears approving of its sharp flavor after a short citric scrunch to his face. Togami simpers the thinnest bit behind his drink before setting it down.

"It's...good," Naegi confirms, mirroring his placement of the glass down. He peers at his lap a moment, smooths more the cloth napkin over it. "Um...thank you, To- ...Byakuya. For taking me out tonight, and buying us all things, letting us stay with you for a while, and-and  _everything."_ He swallows, exhales. "You've done so much for me, I don't know how I'd begin to repay you for it all."

Guilt laces through the loops of each letter. Never would Togami disclose his twinned thoughts, his constant wish to give back to the one person in his life who's ever given to him first without lusting after a turnaround. And that- that's been his epiphany as of late, as of the quiet bike back to his home through a lone rode, thinking thinking thinking.

"You sound like an idiot," he says instead, to which Naegi stiffens into a match of his gaze. "If you ever hope to get anywhere in life, you'll have to learn to be more selfish."

Naegi's shoulders clench, thumbs fidget in his lap. "Well...maybe, but I think I still prefer to be nice. Making people happy is more important than success."

Then their positions swap, and it's Togami struggling to comprehend the gushy mushy foreign words, blinking behind his lenses a full length with mouth dropped flat, low. Never once has Naegi ceased to shock him, and for someone so ordinary to harbor such depth- it'd been what attracted Togami at all. Still, he lifts the drink to his mouth, stares to a far wall. "Be  _nice_ ," he mocks in a scoff, "The last person to tell me that ended up with her throat slit."

The wine empties into a tip down his throat, sets the flute to the table in time to their lanky host setting a silver tray in the center of the table by the bottle he picks up next to refill the glass to halfway. Togami nods to him curtly, shifting a look quickly to Naegi, lost in wonder at the newly placed appetizer before them.

"...Matcha?" he guesses of the bright green sludge resting in six little spiral shells.

Togami's head shakes, correcting, "Snails," and restoring that pinched look to Naegi's face that he frowns at. "Be cosmopolitan, Makoto."

His lips still twitch regardless, selecting a smaller bowled spoon to dip at one of the mollusks. He supposes it isn't much different than the array of seafood eaten on a regular basis around here, most of which is surely found sickeningly strange by newcomers. And he likes those, so perhaps this will be the same, just with himself in the position of the uncultured outsider. The spoon scoops a bite of the green goo upon itself. Togami picks another shell between two fingers and downs it like a shot of sake.

"Tastes... _weird,"_ Naegi says once he's finally pressed the teaspoon to his lips. "Like, uh...if chicken were seafood. And green." His tongue presses to mouth's roof and back several times, brows involuntarily falling again to a knit. "And garlicky."

A long stare finds him, before Togami dips his head in a snort of derisive amusement. "You're behaving as though it's nuclear."

His napkin's pointed corner dots to his lips, spoon ditched and wine sipped. He allows a breathy laugh at the comment. "Sorry, sorry. I'm just not used to, like, European stuff. Kuwata goes on about being half English all the time, but I think he has it confused with American."

"How cultured," Togami bites cynically. "Being a child of mixed descent is no means for wasting your life knowing nothing of either side. It's downright offensive, truly."

"You say that like you're- Oh, wait are you half-something, too?" Naegi says in an innocent awakening, cocks his head a fraction and goes on, "Sorry, if that sounds weird or-or rude or anything. I just never thought about it before. I guess you do look...uh, y'know... Y-You're blonde."

His eyes swivel at the stuttering. White wine swims a lap around his glass. The question's gawky not only in delivery but of context; his knowledge of whatever so called  _mother_ he'd had is a fog over the horizon. A surrogate for his father's power- that's all she'd been, never once knowing her own creation after he'd been plucked from her. There's no pain behind the memory, or lack there of; he doesn't need  _mommy_ to nurture him, never did and never will. Having another tie to the world would have only slowed him down. But Naegi has no business hearing any of this, no right to know Togami hasn't the slightest clue what she looked like, felt like, sang like. He supposes, though, that she must have been beautiful, for himself to be blessed by looks as so. He likes, too, the idea of being so worldly, and thinks himself so anyhow, so, "Yes," is his ultimate response. "Half French, if you must know."

"Oh!" And he nods. "That's really cool. So this is like your culture, then."

"Yes, a mediocre French restaurant in the middle of Tokyo is my culture." And another elegant sip takes him once he's lilted so callously, " _Tu es une bonne poire,_ Naegi Makoto."

He laughs, knowing not of the veiled insult. "Yeah, I know, you weren't  _born_ at this place or anything." A smirk tugs his mouth. "I really don't know much about France- or Europe at all, like I said. My taste is a little further west. But Enoshima used to model in Paris a lot, and would talk about all the cute cafes and fashion trends. And,  _hah,_ all the cute guys she saw, so I guess it does have some appeal."

Togami takes two things from the soliloquy- Naegi thinks French men are attractive (points scored toward himself), and much less pleasing, the reminder of their omnipresent overlord. The speaker senses the controversy as well, all humor vacating his expression and an idle gnaw taking his lip a moment. Neither wish to stain the evening, but it's a tough recovery from the gut-clenching queasiness brought up by her mention. It's peculiar to Togami, too, that after all the woman had done, he's still inclined to bring her up in casual conversation. He doesn't quite understand the lingering tie to her, from his throat to her tugging wrist. Naegi doesn't quite understand what type of treatment he deserves.

"I suppose we should...make the bed, rather soon," tempts Togami into the background of classical instrumental. And though he expects the quizzical look tossed his way, his fists tighten atop the tablecloth anyway. He leans forward a harsh length. "Enoshima is the bed."

Another pondering moment, and the pieces click within him, illuminating the hazel green around his pupils. "Oh, right. Um...we should do that."

Hardly is it a solution. Togami loiters around the metaphor, stares to his faded reflection in a dull silver spoon. "It'd be already made if you hadn't shot the damn sofa by mistake," he dares to quip in a fold of arms. "Or, perhaps, by your loyalty complex."

"Loyalty?" Naegi blinks, then scowls. "N-No. I'm not loyal to her. I mean...sure, I owe her a lot for getting my life on track at first, but- But,  _no,_ she completely ruined it! She put my family in danger- she doesn't deserve my loyalty, or my compassion or  _anything!_ "

Several tables about the quiet space startle to Naegi's fist hitting the tabletop, clattering silverware. He forces breaths to calm through his nose. A dark hue claims his ears' tips at the notice of the attention on himself, clears his throat, pusillanimous, and ducks his head downward. Togami bats not a lash, absorbing the livid outburst as a reassuring of oneself more than anything. Though, as long as this mentality is trained to stay put, he thinks he can move on from the issue, but does not yet drop it entirely from his mind's borders, merely tucks it into a pocket off to the side.

Things are glazed by a sheen of awkward after his tantrum, though it isn't long before they've the ability to conceal it within dinner's arrival. His plate is a sophisticated drizzle of flavor over a thin sliced and faultlessly seared lamb dish, choosing a classic and decadent Coquilles St-Jacques for his companion, who seems to find it much more enjoyable than their selected appetizer. The entrees are paired this time with a velvety Cabernet that he thinks he prefers less to the prior three flutes of Chablis, though hasn't much room for complaint. Naegi pokes fun at the scarce portioning ( _"Heh, apparently the more you pay the less you get-"_ ) but aside the lavish breads and cheeses that accompany their meal, he's near groaning in refusal to the dessert that's promised, until it's brought to their table and his eyes are fireworks cracking through a pitch city skyline.

" _Petit Gâteau,"_ Togami garbles, taking a spoon to the side of the miniature chocolate cake. The whole plate is trickled in lines of sweet syrup, sprinkled in powdered sugar that blends with the vanilla ice cream paired beside it, slowly going soupy against the side of the warm dough. Naegi gasps in delight at the surprise center to it, once the spoon's sliced a corner off and allowed the molten chocolate core to seep out. It's a gorgeous mess of delicacy.

"What's that mean?" he manages to question after breaking from the stupefaction. "Isn't that what you called me when we first met?"

"It means beautiful," Togami dismisses in an ignoring of the latter half. Thinking back on the past is impossible to him now, in this moment where they're the only two in existence, and Naegi's the most frustratingly interesting person in the whole world and he can't ever get enough. From their sunder of inches, his utensil carries the bite forward, pressing it to his mouth. Naegi opens willingly, half mast eyes never leaving the other's as he sucks the spoon of its every last savor. His lips are plush against its exit. He licks his lips in a slow curve of tongue,  _mmm-_ ing deeply in a short close of lids together.

After the recovery, Naegi sits back with a hand to his taut-feeling abdomen, grin spreading across his mouth. "That's  _good._ It reminds me of the street vendors in Narita. My parents used to take us there over the summers a lot, since we lived right by." He takes a spoon of his own and delves into the ice cream, one palm trailing under the drips on the way to his mouth. Swallow. "I'd always get chocolate in my taiyaki, instead of red bean." The spoon dips into the cake, though remains stilled there. "But this is  _way_  better, especially...with you here."

Then it's Togami's turn to play taster, the next bite of warm gooey cake fed into his mouth at his second's touch. The review Naegi had pitched had been accurate; he's flooded with rich decadence, playing toward the secrecy of his subtle sweet tooth. Even sweeter- the press of lips to his that follow it, leant to the booth's middle, slow, slow, craving.

Naegi pulls off him where his own reluctance had stunted it. A finger runs idly along his chest, breath hot and saccharine to his ear. "How do you say, I want to take you home, drizzle your body in chocolate and lick it all off _,"_ a kiss lands soft to his pulsing throat, "in French?"

Togami braces himself, heat in all the wrong places fighting against his will. " _...Une bonne idée._ "

They're hardly even in the car before he's already had his jacket pushed from his shoulders. The door thuds shut, back to the front seat and Naegi in a straddle about his lap. Their lips feel a sin to part.

"Mmf- Don't get the wrong idea," Togami breathes once they at last do, for only that Naegi may trail kisses down his neck, fingers to his buttons, kisses to his chest. "This doesn't make us any sort of  _partners_ besides that of business."

"Uh-huh," he dissolves, tongue circling a pert nipple. Togami shivers, yet remains adamant with an, "I mean it, Makoto," that makes the censured one pull back, resting palms to his pecs in the cutest mess of chiding. "Byakuya, we've already fucked, I've blown you more times than I can count, and this is the second date you've asked me on. You still think we're just  _friends?"_

"When have I ever called us friends?" he says back, then, "And I haven't asked you on any  _dates_ , I don't know what this implication is for."

"What was tonight?"

Togami narrows his eyes, not in hostility, but in contemplation. "Tonight was...dinner."

"Right, a  _no homo_  candlelit dinner that ends with us making out in your car.  _Please,_ Byakuya, I've been paid to do less." He shifts his hips in a way that coaxes a hitch to his breath. "And to the bar that time, you know, the one where we fucked twice after?"

"Not a date," he insists. "I needed milk."

"You needed my pussy," he snaps back, the vulgarity igniting sparks through his searing skin. They kiss in his Mercedes, and it's dark warm gooey chocolate, and it's Sex on the Beach and sex on the beach, and pistols and swords and butterfly knives and it's a shitty two hour movie about slicing through necks and it's those freckles he swore weren't in her pictures online, and it's vomit hose-sprayed from the upholstery of his car and explosions and gleaming green eyes and the fog to his glasses, it's harsh and it's soft and it's what he's always wanted. They fuck in his Mercedes, and it's magic.

Cigarette smoke bleeds out the open window the whole way home.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk," is their soft greeting upon entering the living room, blazers over forearms and euphoria buzzing behind tongues. A double glance down finds Kuwata pressed to the arm of the longest couch, shaking his head in reproaching. "It's past your curfew, children."

Where Togami sprouts roots of irritation, Naegi steps forward as soft as he is with everything. Across the cushions, Komaru lays on a side, peaceful in her repose and face dreaming, head resting in Kuwata's lap and tiara resting on the side table. A tag hangs from the front of her white fleece pajamas. Naegi lays a gentle hand to her shoulder at a crouch to his haunches. "Hey,  _Komaruuu_." Doe's licks to a pond are his voice. "Let's get you to bed, okay? You can sleep in my room again if you want."

Her face lifts from the squish to her chubby cheek lain against his thigh and stretches around a blink, a yawn, a nod. She's led off toward the stairs, and Kuwata immediately relaxes in a way that just screams  _I haven't moved in hours._ He sizes up the other with a long glance that breaks out into sly mirth across his face.

"Got lucky tonight, didn't ya, tiger?" An obnoxious  _rowr!_ punctuates it. Togami is honestly shocked his teeth do not all shatter from the weight at which they tighten.

"You'll be the lucky one if I don't wake you up with a gun to your cock tomorrow morning." It carries him off toward the same direction his night's paramour had disappeared to, but halts a beat at the cross over of rooms to turn back to him, to the quiet television, the lavish expanse of his living room. "Though it'd be a disservice to myself to allude to anything other than pure fortune, wouldn't it?"

A pause, and Kuwata grins into his retreating back.

Around the lip to a guest door, he peeks himself, spots Naegi tucking the clean white duvet up around his sister's shoulders. One dog pokes his ears up at the sighting of his master, tail thumping hard against the twitching face of his twin while the third sleeps behind him. Togami presses an index finger to his mouth when the one staring him up gears for a yap, and his head tilts much akin to familiarity, but remains obediently hushed. The threshold gains a second, and the door shuts against the last clip of the beast resting his chin back down to Komaru's hip.

"So precious when they're sleeping," Togami teases in a low tone, and his arm goes around his waist as would a loving spouse. Naegi's eyes roll, though he never stops smiling on their walk to his bedroom.

The mattress curves beneath his lay unto it, seconds before the other joins in a lay atop him, kissing his face all over and tender touches to the neck, shoulders, chest. His glasses are thieved, lost to the nightstand where moonlight glints through sheer lace. Those hands- they travel in grooves, caress him the most tender way he's ever to know. His own feels up the length of Naegi's undershirt once they've both stripped marvelously. Fingers catch around his wrist in tune of, "Ah ah, don't get the wrong idea now, Byakuya."

Stagnancy chews his look, reclaims his hand to tug Naegi's giggling mouth down to meet his by the front of his shirt.

It's another half hour of glory before their bodies make again two forms. Naegi rolls off of him panting, lays matching the ceiling with his golden eyes and exerted chest. Togami allows himself a generous length of basking; his arm only leaves the fold across his face once he feels the shift of blankets, catching a glimpse of boxers tugging up to his jutting hipbones in a sway of them toward the en suite wash.

"I'm gonna shower," he announces into a stretch of an arm above his head. His tongue flicks taunting dominance in his turn around. "I hope the bed's clean and warm by the time I'm back to cuddle."

Togami mouths a humming. "Don't think me incompetent of such a stupid thing."

A daunting look shimmers through his hazels, taps his lips to quirk before vanishing behind the door to in minutes following cast steam beneath it.

There's a certain satisfaction (aside from the obvious) found through it all, through the endless sex on sex on sex on sex. He feels an empowerment from the moans he extracts, the twitches that trail under his fingertips. Everything is his own to control when he's cast in the moon's light of erotica. Flesh and bones and hot hot hot. For certain he cannot say what he finds more gratifying- filling someone with his cock or filling them with bullets. He thinks a mix of the two would do him most well.

But for the time encapsulating them to one another, fucking Naegi Makoto's ass hard up against any nearest surface is enough power for him, so he keeps his guns holstered and blades sheathed.

It isn't love, hardly even yet  _like,_ he's willing infatuation at most, which he's said before and will again to ease himself of the stupid softness in his heart. It isn't love, but no one at all had suggested as such other than himself, which tips his skin in red to realize he's no reason to even think it at all. It isn't love, but the way Naegi sounds when he's asleep beside him, breathing the softest melody and so impervious to devastation, the way Naegi looks and feels and sings is all he knows or needs to, and it all together lulls his sleeping pattern back to perfection.


	14. Chapter 14

_It isn't love, but the way Naegi sounds when he's asleep beside him, breathing the softest melody and so impervious to devastation, the way Naegi looks and feels and sings is all he knows or needs to, and it all together lulls his sleeping pattern back to perfection._

Then it's all together ruined by two palms tapping fresh to either cheek.

"Togami-chi," pulls him further awake, digital clock blurry to his naked eyes in its flashing. He squints at the dark figure looming over him with hands squishing his face, too startled and groggy to be fully yet agitated.

"Komaru," he manages with his mouth forced into a pucker. "Stop touching me."

Her compliance meets to a sharp turn over to face the bed's center, comforter tugging with him. She shakes him by the bicep and whines his name another time.

" _What?"_ accompanies a sigh and glare back toward her.

Her feet shuffle bare to the carpeting beneath it. "The bathroom light won't turn on."

A twitch goes to his face. "So talk to the ghosts in there. Goodnight."

"There aren't any that I can sense," annoys him further, a finger going to her chin then dropping back quickly to frantic fists at either side. "But-! Will you come fix the lights...please?"

It isn't her posed  _cute_ factor that he gives into, but rather the wish for  _quiet_ that should follow her requests met. He permits himself being led the short ways down the hall, and she gestures to the downturned lightswitch like some sort of daytime game show prize. One hand is lifted out of its fold, finger brought against it to raise it.

Darkness.

He  _sighs,_ moves past her to flick the switch in the hall to garner the same result.

"A fuse must have blown," he concludes astutely. "Tell one of your good for nothing  _brothers_  to go reset the circuit breaker in the basement."

"Leo-chi is sleeping like a dead body and...huh, I don't know where Makoto is." Her lips purse, but she waves it off. "So you're the only brother here to ask."

He peers down scathingly at her. "Don't call me that." And exasperation runs through him.

It isn't her cute factor of the wish for quiet that drive his steps down the concrete staircase into the musty cellar, but rather his own curiosity as to issues pertaining his home. Everything must be in as perfect a shape as it is able to, even the circuit controlling a handful of rooms at five in the morning. He chastises his own obsessive compulsions on his brisk walk to the cool room's center, phone screen glowing along his pathway forward in place of locating the bulb. Light crawls along drab flooring, echoing walls, high heeled boots laced all the way up to knee caps, an assortment of random-

He recoils, blinking hard and grappling for the dangling chain just behind his shoulder. Brightness floods the area, glints along the freeze of his bones, along the teeth shining like fox's in disorganized savagery.

"About time!" Enoshima Junko drops a chunky heel to the concrete floor and hops up into her full stature. "Been waiting an hour for your pansy ass to come down here! Don't you know it's not polite to keep a lady waiting, huh, huh?!"

" _You,"_ he spits, cursing a dozen generations to proceed her in the heat of the single word. Against the wall beside her, a heavy weapon leans, and he doesn't need many turns to guess the smashed circuit box's murderer was Enoshima, in the basement, with the sledgehammer.

Her endless legs trail up to the inches of her miniskirt, flouncing as she strolls catlike across the way. Those acrylics scrape along his jaw, blue eyes pinched through her lashes and grin too cunning for anyone's good. He does not move as she has her way stroking his face, waits in steeled patience for that cockiness of hers to play her hamartia. "Is it true what they say about blondes, Byakuya-chan? That they have more fun?" Her lips are full and shining scarlet, toxic into ever spill. "Or that they're all so  _stupid?! Aha!"_

Fingertips go to cover her giggle, and he takes his opportunity to pounce with a hand wrapped to her wrist and the other to her throat, forces her spine against the wall in a thud. " _Ouf-_ I just love it when Daddy is rough with me."

"I'm going to kill you, right now," Togami tells her, so near to her face that their breaths share a boundary, "Do you really wish for those to be your last words?"

"But wait, darling!" she chokes against his hands' tightening. "If poor little old me gets killed, how ever will you know where your sweetheart's run off to?!"

Lethal rods pierce through him. He's able to open his mouth for built up threats to spill, halted by a call down the concrete.

"Togami?" floats against the walls, "The lights aren't working down here, either... Did you fix the thingie? It's really dark..."

A swallow grates his palm. Her lips stretch beyond human in a flashing of her sinister grin, hair tied back in two plush pink bows that match horrendously to her personality. Togami shouts over a shoulder, "Go to bed. I need time to work on this."

Tentative footsteps meet his command, along with the closing of the door that seals off the soundproof square, tapping dull above their head before fading out of range. Enoshima grinds forward her waist against his bare thigh. He knees  _hard_ upward. She moans.

"Where is he." And his demands aren't a matter of question, never asking politely to be told what he seeks, always in power, always in command. The mindset clashes to the stubborn shake of her head.

"Mako's coming home," she explains. "I don't like how my baby's been being treated around here. Did you  _see_  the size of that hickey on his neck?! Terrible, horrible, heinous!"

"I'm about to leave a dent twice that size in the side of your skull. How does that sound?"

Again, a drool-wet moan creeps past her choking lips. He sneers.

And flinches- "And with how violent you've been getting lately- oh, no, no, no! I can't leave my little angel with a coldhearted mercenary who's developed such a nasty wasty bloodlust." 

Around him, she curls a wisping cat's tail with disposition its twin. "After all, I've already lost one good, sexy, competent worker to your  _dastardly_ hands. And that lovely little blonde at the strip club just this afternoon! Can't trust you, Togami-chan, I just can't!"

Sooner would he take life's final leap than ever grovel to her blackmail. She's thrown gruffly to the floor, spreads her thighs on impact and licks those same lips. Togami needn't please her further by gracing a step upon her filthy, miserable body; he pins her in place through his superiority alone.

"Tell me what you want." Ultimately, he knows, it's best to clip straight to the point. Enoshima Junko covets some sort of boon from him- all the crazies do.

One knee folds over the other, elbows drawing up to support her. Her chin tilts upward, never once losing that infuriating look of delight. "Oh, honeybun, sugarplum, darling, angel,  _beauty,"_ her tongue clicks to her gleaming incisors. "I only want for you to be happy!"

He refuses her in child-rearing patronizing authority. "Tell me what you want."

Those fat gorgeous lips pout, charm all at once flooding from her in a tip backward of her head and a heavy sigh of a disgruntled teen girl. " _Alriiight,"_ and she's that same valley girl west-coast surfer annoying little beetle. "It's not much, really. Just wanna see ya take a gun and blast your own damn head off! You'd just look so  _cute-_ I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off you then!"

The bulb hums in hitches over his head, glows his back an aura of gold against the dull, ruthless chamber. And he blesses the atmosphere with a snowflake chuckle, looks down on her in all senses with a gelid smile. "You want me dead? _Hah-_ Join the club."

She's smug enough to spare no reaction to his slow lean for her hammer, grasping the wood handle like a new limb, cold metal head weightless to his palm. In one swing, it draws down toward her, stopped in the crook of her boot's heel by a mad kick outward in defense. It comes harder this time against the knee of that same leg, cracking the bone to an audible extent. She hollers as it falls limp to the floor. He lifts the weapon, rests it over a shoulder, and laughs again.

"You seem to have miscalculated, Enoshima Junko," he assures. "I-"

The concrete is solid against his back from the height he falls at. It paralyzes him a moment, hammer clattering beside him as two twins lost in warfare. The swift swing of her second leg beneath his feet had landed her in a crouch, which she pushes herself up from in only a minor limp, gushing with the pleasure of both their pain.

"Did ya really think killing the antagonist would be so anticlimactic?" He lay rubbing a hand against his battered skull, glasses askew across his nose's bridge. She snatches them up to press to her own eyes, stands with posture immaculate and speaks in a manner that mimics acuity. "In the calculations of all media types-  _literature, film, theater, manga, et al. -_ there appears to be a startling presence of plot twists just before the major villain is taken out." The specs whip from her face in a toss of both arms outward, upward. "Welcome to yours, Togami-san!"

Her palms clap together, rolls one under herself in a bow forward. Togami rests in his spot unmoving. No outside forces present themselves. Beneath her pouring crown of hair, he sees her blink, reach both hands forward to clap sharply another time.

At last she glances up toward the stairs, the closed door, where his stare follows. Blank.

Her pretty mouth scowls harsh. "Makoto! Now's the part where you, like, totally betray your one true love by revealing you've actually been siding with  _me_ this whole time, and then you  _pewpewpew!_ and we ride off into the sunset together!"

Though the admission is a blade between his ribs, the tart flavor of what he prayed in rebellion to, there's yet to exist evidence other than her petty screeches. Enoshima straightens, clomps to the bottom of the stairs and waits with hands to her full hips. "Ma- _koto!_ Are you up there still? Are you there, are you?!" No response greets her silent pause for purchase. Slow, steady, her face morphs into a tug of dejection.

"M-M-M...Makoto..!" Her hands lift in empty cups of nothing. In one sudden rush, tears gush like a broken dam from her gem blue eyes, then all at once end in a tight wrap of arms about her middle. "You thought he betrayed me, and I thought he betrayed you but tricked you into thinking he betrayed me, when really all along, I was the only fool in this crap _tastic_  situation!  _Ahahaha! Loser, loser, loser! The loser is me, ENOSHIMA JUNKO!"_

Tears again drag her mascara down her rhinoplasty, though it's an incomprehensible cocktail of lovely and loveless. She gags in shock against the fingers that clamp through the back of her scalp, yanking her backward into the dusty hot romance of loathing into her ears. "What was it you were saying about plot twists, hm?"

Her eyes roll back and she's just  _gaga_ for the way she's thrown like disposable litter against the concrete wall, ass to the floor and head lolling to a shoulder.

"All my...hard work," melts from the drool trailing her chin. "All...for...nothing. Puh-Puh- _Pointless!_ "

Togami stands before her, an elbow leaning in leisure against the end of the hammer. His shadow draws across her, a tiger with fur of cashmere thrown atop her wilted form. "You see, Enoshima Junko, Makoto would never betray me. Where I am God, he is my Iscariot. And, honey," a cold laugh breaks the monologue, staring her down in two scathing spotlights, "you're about to be crucified."

Nothing sinks past the swirling solar system beyond her wet paper towel brain. "My whole life-  _wasted._ Everyone I ever loved- _gone!_ And now-ow-ow...I'm about to be killed by a jackass who was supposed to be pushing daisies months ago!" Finality snaps across her lips in form of the brightest sunshine smile, the sweetest little girl in the whole wide world, a kitten mewling blind for its mother. " _Beautiful."_

And it'd be a  _beautiful_ end to her delicious misery, though Togami Byakuya's feeling more of a grip on his dominion than he has in the last mouthful of weeks, feels the power surge through him in waves that touch along each point- affability and its opposing control, harmonized into the development of person. He's his own person, and he's strong and he's strong and he's so fucking strong, and he'll be  _damned_ if he's going to let any stone cold bitch besides himself get the last word.

"You see, Enoshima Junko," his weapon is wielded into a palm, swung idly in a low arch. "I don't very much like being stolen from. And that includes taking my boyfriend from me."

The sledgehammer smashes her in a violent  _crack_ to the face. All the teeth whip from that smile, cartilage and retinas and all other sorts of brain splatter chasing it in the dozen more  _bang! bang! BANG!_ s that come after. Overkill? Perhaps, he thinks, in a hollow drop of wood to concrete, but watching Enoshima Junko's headless form slump sideways against his basement floor- His tongue rolls along the spray of blood coating his lips.

He approaches her gingerly, the normal swagger to his walk toned down to a stroll. A long minute is spent just watching her, watching the rivulets of plasma drip through every perfect contour to her body, and she's  _beautiful,_ more so than he's ever seen another monster be. But-  _oh -_ he's no monster. He's no monster, he's no beast, he's no wretch. He's a person, with feelings and thoughts that battle like hellfire through his head. He's a person defending all that he knows. He's a person standing at the feet of a ruined corpse, drenched in blood from hairline to toetips.

To her, he leans close as comfort.

"Thanks for the prize."

Fatigue drags all his muscles to a lag, the several back-forths from story to story to story ironing patches of exhaustion over him. It's an hour of this of that and of the other, a mind cleared for the first time in two decades. Diligence is his color, and then it's five AM again and no one has woken him up to report faulty lighting. There's fresh clean clothes on his fresh clean body, and the like of his life is sleeping beside him. His bed-  _theirs -_ is crisp in its neatly folded press of blankets, sheets, pillows and their cases. And that latent smell of burning hair- it's merely from his straightening iron.

Naegi gravitates toward the new warmth in the bed, nuzzles a nose into his shoulder in the same breath of Togami relaxing in the honeyglow of morning come over the horizon. He brings a hand up to stroke in serenity through soft brunette.

"You were going to let her kill me, nasty little bastard," he says, resists the urge to make that gentle petting hand flip to a smack upside his skull.

His side is cuddled closer to, arm across the chest and sleepy murmurs in his neck. " _Mm..._ love you."

He scoffs into a roll of his eyes, and if his fortune expanded each time he met with the idiocy to warrant the reaction- But he's... _tired,_ tired from relationships, feelings, the drama of caring, which he's been doing far too much of lately. And, in a hold of him closer to his chest, he feels sans willingness that it's been put to good use.

Oh, he's so  _tired_.


	15. Chapter 15

The electrician had said the basement smelled weird.

Early morning surrounds them. He's sat on one couch, bay window set opened and curtains tickled inward. Today's suit is gray Armani. He adjusts the white border around new lenses. The rim to his black coffee mug kisses him bitter. "Check's on the table."

He doesn't bother counting the days anymore, not that he'd ever been so efficient in splitting Sunday from Thursday from Monday again. There isn't a point in breaking that rhythm of days that ombre together without flaw. The appointment he'd placed to have his circuit box replaced, one that had malfunctioned so greatly as to implode in on itself (telling this story had earned him a peculiar look from the hired hand, though he'd spoken in such lethal confidence that it'd smoothed over it), was set to two hours post the six AM call. And he'd wiped the blood from his phone screen, and went upstairs for bed.

Guessing purely, he'd call it now nine, not a single disturbance from the upstairs guest rooms yet to stir him. Outside the window grants a revved engine, the work truck tearing out of his gates and down the street into white morning light. He clicks the television on. More coffee fades into his mouth.

_"-sudden shocking disappearance has been suspected to be foul play."_

His mouth smirks behind the rim. The newscast goes on with an overhead view of the ever grand Enoshima estate, marble and statues and perfectly trimmed hedges. To himself he must be impressed they've so quickly discovered the vanishing, though supposes for such a grand figure in the society of fashion and sex trafficking, three hours since death would seem a century. He thinks he'd be plastered across every station the same second the bullet entered him.

It repeats over what meager details are known of the crime, then cuts to the darkened out figure of a tone he knows.

_"E-Enoshima said if she wasn't h-home before sunrise, she-she'd be_ dead!" The anonymous source weeps openly through her voice.  _"She's gone! She's gone she's gone she's-!"_

Togami scowls at the attendant's distraught disposition. The immense favor he'd done to her, to himself, to the world as they know it-  _ungrateful._ He hones back into the program, catching a short, " _Local investigators are now looking into the possible ties between the recent disappearance of a worker at a Tokyo gentleman's club-"_ before he's distracted into the padding footsteps that trail behind him. A turn- Naegi sits to his right on the two-seater sofa, blinks away repose in a rub of knuckles across his eyes. Collecting himself a moment, he takes the cup from Togami's hands and sips quietly at it. He huffs.

Speech does not pass between them a long while, sitting and watching the breaking news images flash by on a loop, replaying the same information as well as the mousy braindead servant's interview. Canaries chirp outside the window.

"You were right," Naegi says at last. "When you said I was loyal to her. At least, the first time around."

Togami gives no physical reply; the drink goes back to his possession, back to his mouth in a long sip. "I'm always right."

Naegi manages to cough a laugh at that, nods loosely. "Yeah. She told me the plans to lure you into the basement, and then I'd be the one to kill you. I agreed." His shoulders lay back into the cushions, arm folding over his middle. "And then I came back upstairs, made sure everyone was alright, and I went to bed."

Wicked humor pushes a snort from his nose. The coffee ripples in its ceramic. "Crafty one, you are. I'm tempted to let you live another day."

He smiles. "I knew you could handle her. And, that you probably wanted to."

Faultless veracity. He doesn't recall ever a person who's known him better, though all the same does not know when he'd disclosed any sort of factoids. Every bit of himself is folded in his core, compact and competent. Spending time in the light of his presence had gifted Naegi with bits of his analytical prowess, he concludes, and feels himself the second time this morning owed worshiping gratitude. And, all the same, he knows he's got it in other places. Every act of altruism draws forth more. He decides, then, that being nice gets you lots of places in life- earns all the reverence there is to be had in the world, not in the same method pure  _fear_ ignites. And where he so adores that feeling...it's sex over murder, it's care over harm. And had he thought the slimmest touch similar to that notion before now, there'd be a pistol to his chin and a clutch to his trigger finger. But he's a person, a person with a balance of mind and goodwill, and the ever-present throbbing burning power that drives him to rise each morning.

An arm goes over Naegi's shoulders. He pauses still, then presses warmly into Togami's side, grasps the remote and switches through channels idly. The coffee mug passes betwixt them again and back to him, and he breathes in the scent of rich brew, of fresh atmosphere, of the laundry soap clinging to the nightclothes of the one in his hold, of everything in his world that is his world. And  _that-_ that's power.

"Byakuya," mumbles aside him, voice sleep-laced anew, once they've settled into the placidity of shared touch and lighthearted programming, and Naegi's yawned into a closer lean of head to his shoulder, and it all feels too delightful to be the aftermath of so much destruction, but- But his name's been said, so he hums lightly in awaiting the continuation. It comes- "Can I have that office job now?"

Togami stares forward, quiet in thoughts absent, and shifts to press his lips to the top of his hair.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sick of this thing so here's the rest all at once

"Mmm...I dunno. Wasn't as nice as your place."

The air vent on the dashboard blows chill through the sleek and flawlessly new Lamborghini. They're stocked in each a seat, the skeptic pressed forward between the front two. Togami seethes in his hard turn out of the mid-city complex driveway where they'd parked. Sakura petals flutter beneath his tires, across the sunlight-glinted windshield. Another head pokes up from the backseat, shoves the other out of the way to face leftways. "Makoto, can we stop at Wendy's?"

"Ask your father," comes the teasing response of the one in the passenger seat, arm hung out the rolled window despite the air conditioner roaring beside him. A dreamlike expression paves his face, one washed in rays of golden light, though he seems to always bear the look in days recent.

"Kuya-chi-"

"No." His sharp eyes glare back at her in the rear view reflection. They switch to the one in the spot beside her. "It wasn't as  _nice as my place_ , because nowhere on this earth comes even close to matching the pristine tenor of my home. Get over it."

"Ah, come on," Kuwata pouts. Arms bend to palms flat behind his head when he relaxes back behind his seatbelt. "Why do we even gotta find a new place? You and Naegi are gonna be hitched by the time summer rolls around, anyways."

Motorcycles rev behind their halt at a stoplight. Togami flicks his gaze to them, back to the sulking annoyance in the expensive leather seat behind him, ignores his classless prediction. "You've invaded my living space long enough."

"That's what you say every time we go apartment hunting," Komaru tells him, listing off further on each finger. "And every time we leave the shower running too long, and when Glitter got loose down the street that time, and at Christmas-"

"Perhaps my repertoire would end if you'd comply to it," he cuts her off. Trees sway in the breeze on either side of them.

From his serene left, mumbles crack Togami's lips into a deeper disdain. "Insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting a different result."

" _Insanity_ is agreeing to let three idiots stay at my house for a week," he takes a  _sharp_ right turn, "and them all still being here eight months later."

Good-natured is Komaru's huffing groan as she falls back into her seat. Naegi's hand sways in the wind of the car's speed. Togami takes a last look at the rear view, one to his left, and returns forward in a silent lax of himself. Much worse he could not find than the patrol of eyes cross emptied spots. He thinks this day, whichever one it may be, is far from the most successful, yet the coat of paint along it looks still as scrupulous.

His shoulder bristles at the sudden palm rested to it. From the back, there's a shifting, and Kuwata picks himself into that center spot again. A look in his eyes reads a sincerity, a genuine integrity that segways back to that respect commanded through his own magnanimity- what nourishes his behaviors above all else. And he says, "Hey," all the while keeping that look of care, "So, are we stopping at Wendy's, or what?"

Veins struggle against the strained clench to his neck.

He falls back into the seat at a harsh spin of the wheel. Laughter catches Naegi, opposing his thriving fury that lights the velocity of the ten minute drive down the open streets of the early afternoon. They pull into the garage in a slow turn of tires, relaxes against the park. Togami rests his head back in a close of eyes, breathes a chime of mouth, nose, mouth, nose, and opens them again to a vehicle desolate save for himself.

The kitchen gains his swift gait, garage door clattering behind. He glances toward the mess of black fur and dripping jowls. Their noses all point skyward, and he follows the trail of them, eyes Naegi seated atop the countertop. Their one desire hangs from his mouth in place of hands busied by shuffling through mail. Togami plucks the cookie from his lips in a garner of his attention as well as the eager brown eyes beneath him.

"Anything at all worth my time?" he asks of the envelopes in his hold. The snack breaks off a bite into his mouth, tilting his chin in a stretch of vision to them. A small set of front paws land at his thigh, and he brushes them off with a short, " _Lyezhat,_ Mozart."

Naegi  _hm'_ s in his continuation of the scan through. "Mostly flyers...Oh, something from Kuzuryuu, probably some kind of thank you for that last marketing deal that went through." Togami brushes his palms together before accepting it, glances over the envelope front side, back, and drops it into the trash bin beside the counter. Naegi places the rest of the thin stack beside his hip, eyes drawn to the phone he taps thumbs against when Togami again glances toward him.

The paws hop another time, another twinned command snapped downward. Four on the floor. Praise falls to the pup and to his own immaculate training skills, though is knocked to reality again by a jump of dog feet to his chest in a force that knocks him back against the adjacent counters. "Tchaikovsky,  _sidet!_ "

He earns a booming bark in the face. His nose scrunches at the disrespect.

A scuffle lands the dog back to his feet. Four tails wag in splendor, a crowd around his knees that take him back toward the second set of counters. He reaches hands above, leant directly before Naegi to retrieve the bag of premium kibble resting in the cabinet. On the lift out, he's met with a kiss to his mouth, disorienting only enough to spill a handful of bits to the hardwood. They vanish in ravenous snaps of jaws. Togami doesn't bother with it.

Naegi's lips are stretched to a smile against his, one that does not fade even once they've parted and he's sitting just so  _cutely_ there to his front, almost enough for Togami to wonder vaguely what it is the other  _wants._ He gets his answer in the strangle that floats to his ears. "Kirigiri's coming over."

His head tips back into a dramatic groan, hands poised still where they'd fallen to rest on either of Naegi's hips. The owner of them grins wider, wiggles them a touch, and leans forward another time, this time soothing him rather than soothing the blow.

"Whoopsie!" splits their soft romance. Togami snaps a glare over his shoulder, one that is not met but rather blocked out by two hands perched on hazel eyes. Komaru peeks through her fingertips at him, and smiles, and it's his turn to play not reciprocating. "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt the lovefest."

"Lovefest?" Kuwata pokes his head through the door from the foyer's direction. His immediate destination is the refrigerator, which pulls into an open-close and leaves him pressing the straw of a juice pouch to his teeth.

"No lovefest," answers Naegi, hands flat to his boyfriend's chest and cheekbones pinked. The slight glaze of embarrassment is replaced by bemused confusion,  _bemusion,_ he'd call it, as he glances over the two. "Why are your clothes so dirty?"

Soil coats the front of her. Komaru looks up from where she'd been fawning over the dogs who'd all instantly flocked to her entrance, and shoves her tongue in Kuwata's direction. "Leo-chi attacked me outside."

"Not  _attacked,"_ he defends, yanking his fingers away from where the smallest dog nips at them. "Just some roughhousing. Baseball season starts next week, I'm roarin' with energy."

"Try not to kill my sister before then, please," is Naegi's only request. No sooner does she announce her verdict to leaving for a shower, treading upstairs at the head of conga line of canines, does Kuwata resolve toward the den with his juice and a magazine snatched from the stack of mail on the counter. Togami indulges in the privacy by pressing his lips back to Naegi's throat, rolls his hips at the vibrating purr felt beneath.

The melody behind his closed eyes is a hymn of bursting color. Kisses- deep, slow, lusting. The physical twines to the emotional, ivy up a wall, makes for a level of perfection Togami has yearned for for a lifetime's worth. Naegi's mouth to his lacks any palpable flaw, nor do the writhes of his body in waves atop the counter, the leg that curls around his waist to draw him nearer. He'd been perfect on his own, though this is one final click of piece into place he'd never admit to needing for completion. He'd been perfect on his own, and to him, so had Naegi, and the joining of them could only be an improvement. And,  _god,_ has it ever. His hand teases up the skin under his shirt. The trembles it ignites all freeze to the knocks beating against the front door.

Naegi pulls an inch off, smiles in a sweetly sheepish way. "Kirigiri's here."

"Don't ever tell anyone the gate access code again," he grouses as Naegi hops from the counter to meet his guest. He attempts composure in several breaths, leaning to the counter's lip with knuckles gripping it backward.

The whip of a cool jeer greets him. "Shall I return once you've poured cold water in your lap?"

"No need," he sneers, "Your presence is an erection-killer enough."

Kirigiri pulls a stool out from the counter's end and places herself gently atop it. "Be careful, Makoto. You've got yourself a desirable one."

It pushes humor to him as he skirts by her, catches her nod to an offer of, "Tea?" and goes to fill the kettle at the tap. Ankles folded, arms crossed- Togami leans compact in his spot, leering hotly forward.

"Can you get the teacups off the top shelf, honey?"

His vexation melts to a glance down, shakes his head vaguely and does as asked. Naegi accepts one at a time three cup and saucer sets, etched in gold and petals, sets them each together beside the stove. "Thanks. I swear you put them up there just so I have to ask you for help."

The front burner twists on below the metal steamer. Naegi out lets a short exhale, then is immediately urged to stiffening at a shout of his name from the room beside. He wanders to the threshold in an inquisitive tip of his head. Seconds pass, and he's lured over to the sofa by Kuwata's promise of something he just  _has_ to see. Togami huffs at his deficit attention in a stare toward the stove's reddening burner top.

Not that he'd ever allow himself discomfort in his own home, his personal domain- but...he's grateful toward the kettle for giving him something to focus on rather than the stoic wight ghosting her judgement over him. He refuses gaze, yet can  _feel_ it, daggers in his neck that this time stick. A gloved hand rests under her chin, knuckle poised bent. Analyzing her analysis of him sends a throb to his temple.

"You know," she says after minutes of silent steaming from the kettle and its babysitter, "You're quite the remarkable individual."

Of  _course_  he knows. Blue eyes narrow. "I don't require validation of my status. I'm well aware."

"You're welcome." It irks him a clamp of claws to tendons. He switches the burner a setting higher in pure impatience.

And  _no one_ asked, but- "Studying you this past year has been the most interesting case I've taken on yet."

Everything of this woman's demeanor is an agitation pulsing further the ache in his skull and the stress to his bones. He hasn't inquired of her opinions on him, hasn't asked her to  _study him_ as though he were some sopping lamb's heart in a high school biology class.

"Your disposition claims to care null for the wellness of others," she goes on, "And yet your affinity for Makoto and his affiliates proves it mute."

" _Affiliates,"_ mocks he, a toss of nose skyward, a hand to the hip. "The implication that I harbor fondness for you or any of his other pathetic coattail leeches is the most offensive allegation I've heard yet."

The ceramic saucer clicks to the marble before her, cup joining to be swirled in steaming drink. "I suppose." Sugar sits in a dish to the side. She examines his even hand serve the second and third cups. "Thank you for the tea, Byakuya."

He drops the pot hard to a cooled corner of the stove. The only reply is the press of teacup to his mouth to mimic hers.

Laughter carries a third to reenter. "Okay, hi, sorry. Kuwata was showing me this thing, uh- Oh!" Naegi's steps approach them closer, allows him a regard to the one leant aside himself. "You finished making the tea."

"Yes," Kirigiri offers in his place, "Togami is a very gracious man."

"Mm,  _ah-_ Yeah, he is," agrees the third, stirring tablespoons of sugar into his drink, graces it with a delicate sip. He pulls away from it with a satisfied noise, a smile, a glance up to him. "Love my very gracious man."

_Siiip._

A lilac lock flicks over her blazer-clad shoulder. His burning blue diamonds never leave her. She notices.

Between their paddling of tension, Naegi spoons more saccharine into his tea, picks up a conversation that circulates his mind. He tells them of his disinterest for the natural flavor of tea leaves, that he prefers instead a more sweeter drink. Smoothies are better, and- oh, that reminds him of his favorite place to get smoothies, and- oh, that reminds him of the concert he and his roommate attended last summer, where they had these really  _really_ good- oh, that reminds him of the performance he's going to this weekend with his sister, some flouncy stupid blue-haired idol Togami has had to listen be obsessed over by the two of them for the past eight months and occasionally have the displeasure of interrupting their dance sessions to, and-

And that very same sister is cajoling him up the stairs with her call for him, and Naegi swallows the mouthful of tea he'd taken on his speech intermission with a look of affectionate exhaustion. He sets the cup down to the counter and excuses himself, shouting back a long, " _Whaaat?"_ in faux annoyance toward his sibling. The beat of socks to the steps fade in moments, leaves them in nothing but the presence of one another again. Silence. Staring. Sipping. Kuwata barks a muffled laugh from the living room. Silence. Staring. Sipping.

A clink of fragile glass to fragile glass. Kirigiri rests his freed hands in a steeple blocking her mouth.

"Makoto is perhaps the most important thing to me in this world," she tells him in a quiet clasp of vulnerability. Another lock of hair is pushed behind an ear. Where Togami expects a continuation, he is offered zip, supposes himself under the spotlight now.

Lashes pad his cheeks in a gentle set of blinks. "Such attachment to another human being is a heavy burden."

Her eyes have at last left him, downcast toward her lap and dark in feeling. He notes the taut purse to her lips. He notes the apprehension in the beat of her soul.

"So long as you keep him safe," bleeds months' worth of thought, preparation, "I'll stay quiet."

His back straightens in a tilt to his jaw, peers at her, peers at her, peers at her. He supposes the notion's come rather late, supposes he feels a twinge of humiliation at having pinned himself outwitting all along. And all together, too, it's a burden as much as hers. The strain is not in following the arrangement- that he'd do without any sort of urging, that he's been doing and will continue to until his keratin decays. But rather he takes issue in her belief to its telling a necessity. He scoffs boldly, attracts those downcast lavenders.

"Of course I will," he decrees. "I'm Togami Byakuya."

She stares a moment, a long, quiet, miniature eternity in her eyes. And her mouth catches the thinnest touch of quirking to its corners.

Relaxing back to a lean anew, he allows himself the mirroring of it.


End file.
